We are looking for Trustees who are as committed as we are about tackling social disadvantage and supporting people to realise their full potential. To enhance our current Board of Trustees and continue to develop our governance, we are looking for individuals with a breadth of key skills, knowledge and experience in the public or private sector, but particularly in the following areas:

• • housing
  • property
  • environmental issues
  • fundraising
  • finance

Current Trustees describe their role within SSJ as enriching and rewarding.  In exchange for their time and commitment, new Trustees can expect to:

• Help set the strategic direction of a £15 million organisation, employing over 350 people across Hampshire
• Make a valued contribution to the charity sector
• Acquire new insights, broaden their experience and meet new people
• Contribute to the development of others through the sharing of skills and experience

If you are interested in learning more about this opportunity, please contact Nicky Cantello on 023 8063 4596 or nicky.cantello@ssj.org.uk for a full Role Description and/or an informal discussion. You can also download the role description HERE.

You will be responsible for providing administrative support to the leadership teams across St James Care (Radstock Rd and Linden House) including the management of the Covid testing regime. You will develop an understanding of IT systems including Nourish (Care planning/case management system) and play a role in training and inducting new staff in these systems.

Working hours are expected to be Mon – Fri Office hours.

The ideal candidate will be organised and methodical. They will be able to work within a busy environment and as part of a team. Good team player, reliable with a passion for working with people. This is a very rewarding position for the right person.

This is an exciting opportunity to play a part in the successes of our wonderful care homes.

Apply Here

We love telling you about those at St James Care who have something unique, a talent, a dream, or even a story.

This past week we spoke to Rodney, a cartoonist – who went to university in Winchester, before moving to Nottingham where he worked for the Nottingham Post for many years.

During our time with Rodney, we learned that he was making a caricature of the Queen, to celebrate the Golden Jubilee – but he also told us about his time at St James care, how it makes him feel alive, that it gives him reason to live – and how his creative juices flow at all hours of the day and night.

It was a great pleasure being able to talk to Rodney – and the video, including his creation of the Queen and a Corgi, is below.

We hope you will enjoy this as much as we did.

With support from Balfour Beatty, who designed and constructed the pad foundations for the accommodation, arranged the closing of traffic in the area – as well as taking charge of the installation – we were able to turn an old shipping container into a modular home for one of our residents.

Dominic Lawrence, speaking on behalf of Balfour Beatty, said: –  “At Balfour Beatty Living Places Southampton, delivering social value to the local community is an integral part of how we operate. We are thrilled to have been able to support this project, providing an individual with their very own space, which is a major milestone in life.

“We are so pleased to see the positive impact this has had on Marc, and we wish him all the best in the future.”

The property comes packed with all you would expect and is fully furnished with a cooker, bed and all you could possibly need in one unit. Marc has been part of our services for a number of years and was excited to move into the property in Northam recently.

When asked how he feels about his new home, Marc replied; “I’m ecstatic – I wake up every day with a cheesy smile on my face, it has made me realise how depressed I was before when I was living in hostels.”

Moving into his own home has been life-changing for Marc, and he commented; “I love living independently- it’s all I ever wanted, it contains everything I need for independent living.    It’s mine, it’s individual, and I love it.   Everything is positive about it”

There is no better feeling for residents when they move into their own home. The feelings turn into stability in their lives which lead to them progressing towards positive outcomes and a future they can enjoy. There is no better way to celebrate International Day of Happiness (March) than to share the story of Marc and his new modular home.

This is a first for Southampton and Society of St James have worked closely with Southampton City Council to provide this unit of accommodation for a resident as part of the Rough Sleeper Initiative.

Thank you to all who were involved in making this possible.

Having social areas where our service users can de-stress, relax and take time out is an important part of their journey. Just as we all enjoy gardening or being in spaces that make us feel relaxed and motivated, it is equally as important that we are able to provide the same foundations for those who have a history of homelessness.

A recent article by the Guardian spoke about this, saying that “research has shown that mindfulness exercises that focus one’s attention on the here and now and stop our minds wandering to the past or worrying about the future are an important therapeutic tool.”

At the Society of St James, we believe that providing a home, a garden, or a place that makes somebody feel good about themselves is part of their ongoing journey which gives them hope and makes them feel good about their future.

Thank you to Brodie and his team for their invaluable work to support people affected by homelessness.

Find out more about Green Fingers Gardening Specialists here

The year started with news that we had passed our goals for our 2020 Christmas Campaign, which meant that we were able to use that money to provide meals for people affected by homelessness, whilst the money raised in excess of the original target was used to help service users on the road to recovery. We are all aware that December was challenging for many of our supporters so the support you showed last Christmas meant a great deal to us.

We also published an interview with the Senior Management team, who spoke about the challenges faced during 2020, as well as the plans ahead for the charity and what this means for the next chapter in the history of SSJ as we move towards our 50th year in 2022. As well as this we shared stories about some of our partnerships, including one with Abri.

We also spoke to Liam, a service user, who told us that his cry for help was listened to – and that SSJ played a massive part in his recovery. Liam sent an emotional message of thanks to Hannah in his interview saying “Hannah I wouldn’t be where I am without your help over the last few months, you helped me achieve my goal of being clean and sober. I’m hugely grateful and will be for the rest of my life”

We also told the story of service users who had the opportunity to head to the Isle of Wight for a team-building bike ride to build confidence and help improve mindfulness.

And we recently shared the exciting news about new contactless donation hubs which are situated across Southampton thanks to the Street Support Network and Go! Southampton. A third of the money raised will go to SSJ – with two other charities also receiving the same from the new initiative to help tackle homelessness.

There are so many more stories we will be telling this year – from supporters to service users, as well as fundraisers and staff. Why not tell us about your story? Email Comms@ssj.org.uk and let us know your story.

We provided the opportunity for service users to experience the thrill and excitement of a bike ride to and from Sandown, a coastal town on the east side of the island.

The trip was made possible thanks to a £4K grant from the My Journey grant, provided by Southampton City Council. And £2K from the West Quay – Hampshire & IoW Community Fund. These grants were given to help replace our existing fleet of mountain bikes, ensuring the ongoing success and benefits to our service users.

It was a very enjoyable day. It was great to go on a bike ride in a different place. It would be amazing to be given a chance to go again.

Here’s the story in the words of Ash Christopher, Re-Fit Team Leader:

“On 17th June 2021, twelve of the participants embarked on a cycling adventure to the Isle of Wight (IoW). The plan was to catch the ferry to East Cowes and then cycle to Sandown, have a swim, a bit to eat and cycle back again. A total of 35 miles. This was to be our furthest ride to date, so in preparation, we needed to build up stamina and speed to make the journey, so we completed a number of pre-IoW rides clocking ever increasing distances.

“On the day we met at 8:30am at the bike garage to make the last-minute safety and equipment checks before we left. We then set out from the garage at 9am and got to the Town Quay Red Funnel Ferry terminal by 9:20am, where we bought our tickets. By 10am we were then on board, leaving for the island. Once we disembarked in East Cowes, at 11am. We headed up York Avenue, a steep hill leading out towards Osborne House, the home of Queen Victoria, on our way to Newport to get onto the Red Squirrel Way cycle path. The total distance from East Cowes to Sandown was 16 miles, we had to climb steep hills and navigate busy roundabouts and traffic.

“Having arrived in Sandown after a 2hr cycle ride we had earned a well-deserved rest. We tucked into our packed lunches and some of us were brave enough to go for a dip in the sea. We only had 1hr before we set off on the return journey back. On the return journey we were up against the clock, needing to board the 4:30pm return ferry, in East Cowes. Everyone gave it their all, in the sun, wind and rain. We arrived with 15 minutes to spare.

“It was fantastic to see the riders come together as a group, supporting, motivating and encouraging each other, whilst sharing in this great adventure.”

Feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with Jay commenting that “it was a very enjoyable day. It was great to go on a bike ride in a different place. It would be amazing to be given a chance to go again.” One service-user also said that “the Isle of Wight was a memorable trip, good fun and a really nice change to cycle somewhere I’ve never been before.”

This would not have been possible without the support from My Journey Hampshire and the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Community Fund. 

Nicky said: “The support received from the PCC’s office is invaluable and allows staff to offer a trauma-informed, strength-based approach to individuals with a history of homelessness and/or substance misuse issues. “Individuals with complex needs are given a place of safety to begin to address underlying issues. Wrap-around support and exceptional partnership working have contributed to a significant reduction in crime and positive move on to sustained independent living.”

Read more HERE (head to page 44)

Thank you to the Hampshire PCC for all your support.

They discussed first reactions to lockdown 1 and their initial fears, shared stories from the frontline, and talked about how proud they are of everyone involved.

Dennis kicked off by asking the Senior Managers what their first thoughts for SSJ were when Boris Johnson stood in front of Downing Street back in May 2020 and announced a full lockdown for the whole of the UK.

Unsurprisingly and unanimously all Senior Managers reflected on the immediate need to keep staff, residents, and service users safe but to also keep as many services as possible running. They talked of how almost immediately resources were pushed to the frontline with a flurry of activity to try to secure and install PPE and IT equipment. 

Operations Director, Nicky Wilsenham, reflected on the need to find ways to “give an unclear message some clarity” She remembers thinking “how do we control this, how do we police this, do we police this?”

For Operations Director, Mike Taylor and his teams, they were facing the immediate problem of how to meet the Government’s ‘Everyone In’ directive and how to immediately house the 30-40 people known to be living on Portsmouth’s streets. Mike stated “we couldn’t have been in a worse position” and remembers feeling somewhat in shock.  

For Operations Director, Tony Keall, his immediate concern was for SSJ’s care home where “we can’t distance people, they are in a shared environment, we have to give intimate care and we cannot withdraw the service”. Tony said it was a ‘scary time’

For Chief Executive, Trevor Pickup, his attention was turning to quick solutions, and even shared a desire to develop festival-type encampments in City Parks to provide tents for those who were street homeless. 

Trevor laughs now that the councils did not take too kindly to this idea and thankfully better solutions were sought including hotels and student accommodation being taken over by our staff to support those who were homeless and vulnerable.

Trevor remembers trying to “grapple with how fast the virus would progress” and questioned, “how wild and creative could we be to solve some life-threatening problems”.

Dennis asked the Senior Managers to recall some of the success stories from the last year.

Both Trevor and Andy, Director of Finance and Central Services, spoke of the adaptability of staff to deal in such a reactive way to the pandemic. Trevor applauded the new ways in which staff quickly adapted through the use of technology (for example online meetings) and how staff quickly restructured their work and places of work to ensure our services could continue safely. 

Trevor said he saw a “huge sense of collaboration and commitment.”  

Andy said that despite the pandemic “we kept the organisation moving forward in a strategic way. We bought a new care home. We bought new property to house even more vulnerable people – incredible!”  Whilst at the same time adapting property to keep people safe in super-quick time and reacting to ever-changing government pandemic advice”

For our Ops Director’s stories were more operational. Tony spoke of how immensely proud he is of how staff, residents, and service users kept Covid-19 out of the vast majority of services during 2020 and recounted many “individual acts of resilience and bravery”. He remembered the heat of summer 2020 and despite the heat, the care home staff turning up day after day in full PPE.

Mike talked about how SSJ’s Substance Misuse workers, within a matter of hours, were “delivering methadone directly to peoples’ addresses” rather than meeting them in the Recovery Hub. He is hugely proud of how his Portsmouth team, alongside partners, opened 2 hotels and housed over 200 people safely in those hotels which was “just astonishing in the timeframe”.

Nicky talked of her teams in Southampton and how they quickly accommodated incredibly vulnerable individuals in the hostels. “Staff went above and beyond”, “an outstanding job,” she said. She talked of how adaptable the criminal justice team was to changing circumstances, later demonstrating increased engagement with service users during the pandemic. Nicky also praised the central office for keeping everything going and talked of how we “Really pulled together as an organisation”

On asking how supporters can help our work….

The Senior Management talked of the importance of supporter donations to our charitable work. Trevor explained that donations are used in a couple of ways from “small scale items of expenditure” for example “for residents who need help with soap, towels, items of clothing.”. 

Trevor explained that we run a residents welfare fund at SSJ which is really important in supporting recovery. 

He then went on to talk of the importance of donations to our acquiring new properties to be ring-fenced for those with a history of homelessness. He explained that “the houses are purchased using government grants however we need to cover the costs of furniture and additional building costs, so some donations will be invested in this”.

Tony went on to explain the importance of monetary donations to ensure “we can do things that really make a difference” going on to talk about the online music sessions that are about to roll-out across our Care Homes in Partnership with The Soco Music Project. Tony also talked about non-monetary donations and how they can make a real difference explaining that during the hand sanitizer shortage, in March, we were hugely grateful to Bombay Sapphire Gin for their donation of hand sanitiser. 

Tony mused “we probably had the best smelling hand sanitizer”. Nicky added that thanks to our supporters’ things were happening in the hostels that helped to pass the time during lockdown such as “Decorating communal spaces – getting everyone involved”. She went on to say “without support and donations we wouldn’t be able to do that”.

Andy talked about how donations kept us running during lockdown, IT kit for example so staff could continue to work from home. 

The charity is very proud that so few people were furloughed during the pandemic and that is in part due to our supporter donations. “Additional funding is invaluable to fund these things”. Andy went on to talk about our plans to improve WiFi across the organisation not only to improve the way we deliver our services but also for service users as well. 

Any donations towards this will be extremely helpful.

The charity will be celebrating its 50th Anniversary next year and the ‘Time Served’ at SSJ by the Senior Management Team varies greatly so Dennis asked the team if they had any stories to share. Quite an emotional and heartfelt response followed…

Tony, having been with the organisation for # years reflected on the changes the organisation has been through. He remembers that there were “30-40 people when I started, we were just in Southampton with a handful of houses and a hostel”. He went on to say “to see the organisation we have grown into – it’s quite something.  In the olden days we used to make it up as we went along – in a good way. We’d identify the need and just go out and meet it.”  Now Tony feels “we have been drawn into a more professional environment, and it sometimes feels a bit more constrained. “ Having said that he felt that because of this the “Organisation had become more professional, more accountable and all of that is a good thing”. His final wistful words were “it’s been quite a journey”.

Mike joining SSJ at a similar time to Tony gave a more recent and emotional account of early last year when he was involved, with staff, in the “setting up of Havant Road for incredibly medically vulnerable individuals and seeing how relieved they were when they were housed with us. They were off the streets, out of shared of accommodation, and fearful for their lives of getting Covid cause these were the people that were dying back in March. And they came into accommodation, lovely room, self-contained, food was being brought to the service, so were their medications from the substance misuse team, and it all happened within 10 days.”  

Nicky as the “new kid on the block” talked of her love of visiting the projects and meeting the clients. She went on to say that what “impressed me since joining SSJ is that Trevor, being the CE actually knows quite a lot of the residents and clients”.   She went on to say that “everybody is just so supportive of each other”.   She recounted her recent experience of doing a shift at one of our hostels “plus doing a shift at 10 Southampton Street is awesome, doing a shift when it was just me and student on donation day”.

Dennis then asked for any final words and, now warmed-up, the Senior Management team were extremely keen to give thanks to all those involved in our efforts over the last year…

Andy said “a massive thank you to our staff. They have been incredible this year. We asked a huge amount of our staff both in services and outside of services. We’ve asked people to put themselves literally in the face of the virus, put up with the fact that they might end up getting it. The response to that has been amazing”. Andy went on to thank the staff in the “back-office environments where we literally closed the office one day and said you are going to have to work from home tomorrow. People have made do in their bedrooms, and their kitchens, on their laps whilst potentially trying to home-school their children”. 

Nicky echoed that “everybody worked above and beyond. Dealing with challenges our residents have thrown up” and wanted to say thank you for the ”help and support from my team and colleagues”. Tony highlighted that the “incredible effort that staff have put in has come at no small personal cost.  Our staff did an amazing job before this started and then they have had to manage this additional level of anxiety and stress”. Tony wanted to recognise the managers who “have done an amazing job. They have been councillors, listened to peoples’ fears, come up with solutions whilst at the same time managing all those same emotions themselves”.  

Mike thanked the board “because they allow us to take a lot of risks”. He went on to explain that “Setting up these hotels, moving as fast as we were with some of the housing, relies on us being able to spend the money upfront”  

And as the final note, Trevor said he was “Hugely proud of what we have done as an organisation. Staff have been fabulous, the board have been fabulous”. Trevor reflected by to 1972 where SSJ started a “night-shelter where we had 15 men living in a communal hall, all living in an open way as a fundamental basic night-shelter”. He went on to say that “Moving from there over 50 years we have bee been able to develop hugely, we are still focussing on providing services to vulnerable people and are optimistic about what we can do going forward.”

Since filming this video we did we did have a outbreak of Covid in one of our care homes which was dealt with admirably by members of staff. We will cover this in a video soon.

The video can be viewed here

My Journey Community Grants and Southampton Council have awarded £4,000 to the Society of St James and Saints4Sport which will help pay for much-needed mountain bikes.

Saints4Sport offers vulnerable people who have been affected by complex issues the chance to enjoy sporting activities such as mountain biking through the New Forest – which helps with fitness as well as mental health.

The bikes which were being used by the team were starting to fall apart and required regular maintenance to work as they should. The new bikes mean the team will now have 10 new reliable bikes that can be used by the Saints4Sport team members on their road to recovery.

Ashley Christopher, Team Leader at Saints4Sport said: “We are delighted with this grant from MyJourney Community Grants and Southampton Council.

“Being able to purchase the new bikes means we have secured the future of our mountain biking activities which are such a benefit to the service users.

“We regularly head out on cycling activities across the south, including visits to the New Forest. We get to see the benefit this has on the service users through improved mental health and better fitness – so these bikes will play a big part in improving the lives of those who are recovering from homelessness or addictions.”

The Society of St. James Saints4Sport Project is run in partnership with the Saints Foundation and offers free educational, sport, and employment support activities to adults who are affected by the harmful impact of substance misuse, homelessness, poor mental health, and involvement with the Criminal Justice System.

Alongside the physical activities, we also offer many other opportunities for people to develop their skills and confidence, including access to training and education, with courses such as Health and Social Care, First Aid, Stewarding, Criminology, and Customer Service available.

For more information on Saints4Sport, visit: ssj.org.uk/sub-service/saints4sports/