Bruce House Foyer provides accommodation for 49 young homeless people aged 16-25 who require support to maintain work, education or training.

Bruce House is a hostel based in Westminster that supports young homeless people aged between 16 & 25, although the majority of current residents are aged between 18 & 21. Over 85% of residents come from minority ethnic groups and over 40% are refugees. The background experiences of residents at the hostel include sleeping rough and time spent in care, in prison and in young offenders institutions; most of the young people are unemployed and have left education by the time they come to live at Bruce House.

Accommodation

Bruce House has a total of 49 bed spaces made up from 19 single occupancy and 15 shared flats, each of which is self-contained with its own kitchen and bathroom and is provided on a self-catering basis.

Project services

Centrepoint conducts an initial assessment of every new resident and then provides regular 1-to-1 support and development sessions for the duration of every young person's stay at Bruce House, with the aim to enable residents to move through this service and in to independent living within two years. There is currently a full-time learning worker and a part-time Connexions worker based at Bruce House who help prepare and enable the residents for their move on to longer term housing. Young people who stay at Bruce House have to be prepared to either engage in further education or training to get employment.

Development & how CRASH help

After receiving an application for help from Bruce House, CRASH allocated £40,000 from the Story of Christmas annual appeal to support the project and later on in the process secured initial design help from TV's Naomi Cleaver. This enabled Bruce House to upgrade the ground floor reception area to create a welcoming environment for all young people and visitors to the service. There is comfortable seating and an informal meeting area; all current fixtures and finishes have been upgraded, including a replacement of the old, very institutional reception desk, with one that is more welcoming and suitable to the nature of the service.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Story of Christmas for their continued loyal and generous support of CRASH.