Finance
The trustees of Turnaround are committed to a program of increasing the finance for the charity’s work three fold. This may seem odd given the litany of job losses and of company closures not just in the United Kingdom but in many parts of the World in the current recession and so explanation is called for. It lies in the Charity’s history.
An application for grant to establish a resource centre for homeless people and people in hostels was made in April 2000 to a Special Initiatives fund managed by the Rough Sleepers Unit in the Department of the Regions. The bid was for £50,000 per annum.
The proposal was drawn up people who had been homeless and were living in hostels who were critical of what they saw as an acceptance on the part of those who ran them to a life of purposelessness and idleness among those that they sheltered. Most of the bids to the fund for were from organisations with salaried staff and with long experience in the field. Perhaps it is understandable then that the proposal was awarded only half the amount requested: £25,000 per annum for two years and possibly even that only then because the project had attracted the patronage of the Minister of the Department, Mo Mowlem.
This amount was supposed to cover rent, salary and supply costs and presumably equipment costs as well. So it was no more than a token gesture to the idea that homeless and ex-homeless were capable of doing something worth while. Less than the salary of a single Higher Executive Officer in the Civil Service, what level of service did the Rough Sleepers Unit think it would provide for? Subsequently the grants was increased to £30,000 per annum and, for 2007/08, to £40,000 per annum (still less than original bid in 2000!). And with this welcome news came with the announcement that grant would terminate altogether in March 2008. We were not even given the respect of being afforded a reason.
The project has met all the targets specified for it by the government in return for its negligible grant and much more. Since its opening in April 2001, it has served its target community five days a week for nine hours a day and 51 weeks of the year. We calculate that some 900 people will have passed through its door by 31 March this year. On average it has assisted twelve people back into work each year and helped many others into accommodation or training and with advice.