Following huge successes in other cities across the country, Street Support West Midlands has now been launched and is already rapidly becoming the key live portal for accurate up‐to‐date information for people experiencing homelessness and for support workers working to help meet people’s needs.

Street Support West Midlands is continually updated by the city’s key frontline organisations including charities and other groups which support people who are in danger of, or who have become homeless, as well as the seven local authority council and NHS services within the West Midlands Combined Authority Region. It’s this uniqueness that has ensured its success across multiple cities within the UK including Nottingham, Southampton and Manchester.

Street Support West Midlands has been created in partnership with The West Midlands Combined Authority and Crisis Skylight Birmingham. Nearly 300 organisations are listed on the site with landing pages specific to Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton. 

Designed to be a central place for people across the West Midlands to easily find help if they are experiencing homelessness or are at risk of homelessness, Street Support West Midlands provides a comprehensive directory of support and advice around housing, addiction, relationship support, food poverty and cost of living support plus much more. Services are searchable by category, postcode or organisation. Maps and other information can be printed from the site and given out as required

In addition to finding help, individuals, community groups, and businesses can also offer support through volunteering, donating items or donating money to the charities listed. 

The best way to design out homelessness is to prevent it in the first place, this means system change as universal prevention and help and advice as targeted prevention in the main areas that can lead to homelessness. 

We are delighted that Street Support Network is now available in the West Midlands. It now shows all the help that’s out there in the region in a simple and accessible way, for those who are experiencing homelessness and for those at risk of homelessness who need to find help.  

Crucially it also lists what is needed by local homelessness charities and voluntary groups, so the public and businesses can help at this critical time. It’s the ‘one place’ to go to find out about homelessness in the West Midlands and do something to help.

By Eliz Hopkins