As the nights begin to get colder and longer here in Wiltshire, our work as a community to end rough sleeping altogether becomes even more important.
This is an area I am passionate about and many local people have written to me about the issue of rough sleeping. My feeling is that no person in our area or indeed in any part of the UK should be without a roof over their head and not only do we have a responsibly to shelter the homeless, but also to provide them with the resources and support they need to get back on their feet.
Often those who I speak to have simply fallen on hard times or been hit with tragic circumstances out of their control and have ended up homeless as a result.The obvious starting point is getting these people housed, but we need to start pushing beyond that and providing more support in the form of counselling, job opportunities and other programmes that means that those we house stay housed and stay in employment so that they never go back to being homeless. One of the phrases that I often hear from those struggling is that they feel they are caught in a ‘cycle’ where they get rehomed, but due to circumstances, they end up back on the street. My campaign in Parliament has therefore focussed on ending these negative cycles, but this means we need some serious funding from the Government and need the Prime Minister to commit to changing the way we help the homeless for the better.
One of the projects I supported is the Rough Sleeping Initiative, which I felt was ambitious enough to make a real difference to us here in Wiltshire and has been backed by £30million funding for the areas with the highest rates of rough sleeping last year and boosted even more with a further £46million this year. In the areas targeted, rough sleeping fell by 32% and this is a very good start. However, we have a long way to go in our journey toward making homelessness a thing of the past. I know that now that we have the funding in place, we can start to take huge strides toward both taking people off the street and keeping them off the street. Everyone deserves a leg up when life deals them a bad hand and I will be a voice for those without one in Parliament.
If you would like a surgery appointment please call 01249 704465 or email Michelle.donelan.mp@ parliament.uk. If you would like to stay up-to-date with what I am doing around the Chippenham constituency and my views on a number of issues, please subscribe to my e-news by using the following link michelle donelan. com/subscribe
