OUR STORY

It was a Sunday morning in the summertime of 2010. I drove to church through Stokes Croft and as I waited at the red traffic light just outside Hamilton House, to my left side I noticed an elderly gentleman laying on the pavement mo-tionless. He was dressed in jacket, tie and shirt. Admittedly, all had seen much better days but I felt it was an admirable attempt to retain at least some degree of dignity in the face of such humiliation.

People walked by going about their day, it seemed not even noticing the man on the floor. The immense sadness of the sight struck me to the core. This is someone’s son. Maybe someone’s father, brother or uncle. It was all so wrong. The light turned green and I drove on the 300 yards or so to my church in Jamaica Street. I got out of my car and locked the doors. I went into the church with a happy to see you ‘good morning’ to those I passed on the way to my seat.

Then, as I sat down in the chair I suddenly realised I had done the exact same thing as everyone else and just passed by the man on the floor.

I felt ashamed of myself and vowed there and then to do whatever I could to help the many ‘people on the floor’ and not walk by ever again. This was the moment I decided to establish a charity to tackle the problem.

I had no idea what I was going to do or how I would do it but just felt I had to at least try. Now, all these years later, I see the hundreds of amazing people who give of their time and money so freely to compassionately help the people off the floor because they too are not prepared to walk on by, and my heart jumps for joy.

Mark GoodwayFOUNDER

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“Give a man a fish and he will eat for one day. Teach a man how to fish and he will never go hungry again.”

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WHAT IS ‘REBUILDING LIVES’?

Since its launch in 2010, The Matthew Tree Project has created the unique ‘Rebuilding Lives’ programme and pro-gressively expanded its service support provision in a well thought through, joined-up and highly effective way.

Most importantly, the model invests as much time as is nec-essary in the people it seeks to help to be able to properly and fully understand everything that has led to, and what is preventing progress out of, the crisis.

‘Rebuilding Lives’ is first and foremost built on a founda-tion of selfless compassion and non-judgemental care. The unique programme is delivered by way of a small team of qualified and skilled staff working through larger teams of, typically 8-12 dedicated, well trained and expertly super-vised volunteers. The model therefore increases capacity without increasing costs and is the perfect response to the double whammy of ‘reducing welfare funding/increasing social need demand’ which we have been witnessing across the UK since 2010 and is still continuing.

‘Rebuilding Lives’ is a collaborative multi-agency model, developed with key strategic partners, from all sectors of society, and from valuable feedback and involvement of the beneficiaries supported. It is funded by a 5-year Big Lottery Help Through Crisis (HTC) grant, supplemented by other grants, philanthropist and corporate donations and fund raising activities.

‘Rebuilding Lives’ is an early intervention model set up to stop people falling through the gaps in service provision and to avoid those at high risk, from becoming homeless.

The aim of the ‘Rebuilding Lives’ model is to:

‘Improve the futures of people in the UK currently living in, or at risk of, crisis as a result of hardship; focused on building meaningful relationships and supporting people to overcome barriers to address the underlying causes of the hardship’.

Our immediate concern is to ensure that people forced to make the horrific choices between eating and keeping warm or paying rent, do not go hungry - which has a devas-tating effect on someone’s mental and physical health. This is where, and how, our intervention begins – with week-ly supplies of good, healthy, nutritious, fresh foods for the whole family, delivered in a warm, welcoming, friendly and non-intrusive, safe environment.

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However, underlying the emergency crisis, people have complex and multiple needs which can only be effectively met through understanding of the issues and empowering people to take appropriate actions; and this is achieved by building meaningful relationships, without time pressure, coupled to a joined-up multi-agency collaborative and stra-tegic approach.

‘Rebuilding Lives’ is highly effective at addressing the prob-lem of an ever increasing number of people and families who are living with impossibly low and unsustainable in-come levels.

Victims of this have a mixture of needs:

• The need to feel safe and secure• The need to have improved health and well-being• The need to have support networks and feel connected• The need to have improved resilience• The need to have new or improved skills• The need to have hope and a purpose

At the point of referral, many beneficiaries are at high risk of homelessness and are in need of uniquely tailored help and support to prevent this from happening. ‘Rebuilding Lives’ has proven to be highly effective in this regard.

Each case is supported for as long as there is a need, typi-cally for many weeks and in some cases for many months, with a full ‘wrap-around’ range of support services from The Matthew Tree Project or via an extensive and growing strategic partner network.

Below: some of the amazing team members who make ‘Rebuilding Lives’ model work

These services include but are not restricted to:

• Acceptance, inclusion and the time to build relationship and understanding of the causes, barriers and unique issues of every case• Client navigation to other support services required• Weekly supplies of fresh, chilled, frozen, ambient food for the whole family• Nutrition and dietary advice• One-2-One mentoring including practical and emotional support as needed• Skills training in specific issues, i.e. budgeting; ICT; home cooking; careers; food growing; food waste reduction• Advice in debt; housing; employment; addiction recovery; fuel poverty; mental health; family breakdown; abuse • Crisis grants for essential household items and emergency payments

The holistic nature of the ‘Rebuilding Lives’ model:

• Recognises people as assets, equal partners in designing and delivering the services. Not as passive beneficiaries or burdens on the system• Builds on people’s capabilities to ultimately benefit their communities, themselves and those around them• Develops two-way reciprocal relationships on equal terms• Empowers people to build a happier, better and healthier future for themselves

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PEOPLE & FAMILIES IN NEED ARE REFERRED FOR HELP

Individuals and families are referred to the city-wide ‘Re-building Lives’ support programme by over 90 in number of a wide and diverse range of officially appointed referral or-ganisations who cover all the possible crisis situations imag-inable. Referral organisations are statutory (city council, schools, etc.) and non-statutory (charities, churches, etc.).

No-one, no group, no postcode is excluded. ‘Rebuilding Lives’ is open to anyone who is in need.

‘Rebuilding Lives’ holistically supports extremely vulnerable people and families who find themselves in a crisis situa-tion.

The programme works in two stages: Step 1: stabilising of the crisisStep 2: addressing the underlying causes of the crisis

Access to support is by referral via a growing city-wide net-work of approved referral agencies.

Client Eligibility Criteria

A person or family are eligible for referral to ‘Rebuilding Lives’ for help and support if, for whatever reason:• combined (total) household income is not enough to cover essential living costs. i.e. housing. utility bills, childcare, travel to/from work/school/job interviews, tax, telephone, laundry, internet, clothes and food• they are doing all they can to help themselves

Any organisation who work with, or come into contact with, people or families who could become vulnerable and find themselves in crisis can apply to become an official referral partner to the ‘Rebuilding Lives’ support programme.

Each referring agency has a responsible person officially registered with The Matthew Tree Project. This contact is responsible for ensuring their agency is operating the sys-tem correctly and only the people in genuine need are be-ing referred.

It is our belief that it is only by different agencies working well together, will people in need get the most effective support.

The ‘Rebuilding Lives’ programme is underpinned by the in-dustry leading Apricot Case Management software as the online referral tool and a mechanism to record the impact the ‘Rebuilding Lives’ partnership has on the people sup-ported by the programme. Where one or more partner is engaging with and supporting a common client the out-comes achieved by each partner is collected by the Apricot system to report on the client journey and ‘mapping’ of the different interventions so that the outcomes can be better understood and the programme can be improved based on collective experience and learning.

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PARTNERSHIP WORKING AT ITS BEST

It is our belief that only by different agencies and the public, voluntary and corporate sectors working well together; will vulnerable people and families in crisis get the most effec-tive support they need.

Being able to ‘navigate through’ and ‘engage with’ the so-cial welfare system and access the help and support need-ed at any given time is very challenging for people, many riddled with anxiety and fear, and therefore enabling this to happen and happen well is a critical aspect of the unique ‘Rebuilding Lives’ model.

People and families in crisis have multiple and complex needs and vastly differing knowledge and capabilities and are often living stormy, chaotic and extremely challenging lives – due to the immense pressures and stresses of their circumstances.

It is for all these reasons that The Matthew Tree Project have put into place a highly effective and very supportive and powerful ‘client navigation’ referral mechanism and team who sit in-between the frontline ‘Rebuilding Lives’ support services and a growing city-wide network of strategic part-ners who provide add-on specialist support as required.

This is not signposting. It is creating ‘robust’ internal corri-dors between multiple service providers within the sector, in such a way which works for the client. The navigation team do the initial leg work: from identifying and locating the right partner service; to making first contact and explaining the client’s story (so they don’t have to) thus ensuring the partner is the right service needed; to understanding how the client can engage with it. Each client’s capabilities are taken into consideration and the partnership works hard to find a way to ensure each person gets the help they need, when they need it and in a way which works for them.

Left: The Matthew Tree Project Food Distribution Hub in central BristolCentre: Spinach (grown with organic principles) from The Matthew Tree Project Garden Right: The innovative and highly impressive Matthew Tree Project ‘Mobile FoodStore’ complete with fridge and freezer

‘Rebuilding Lives’ strategic partners include, but is not re-stricted to:• advice services• addiction recovery support programmes• fuel poverty support• mental health support services• family support services• legal representation• grants for essential household items and crisis payments• community transport

Our aim is to stop people and families falling through the gaps in service provision and improve the overall client ex-perience, working hard to ensure people move from crisis to independence in the best possible way.

“The Matthew Tree Project is amazing! They are a great help to me and everyone – the way they got it all sort-ed out and organised is great. The staff are amazing and friendly and it’s like another family. There’s no judgement – just great help and makes the unfortunate feel better. Couldn’t manage without them.”

Client of The Matthew Tree Project and resident of Knowle, Bristol, 2018

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Head Office: The Matthew Tree Project 10 Filwood Broadway, Bristol BS4 1JN

T: 0117 966 8071E: info@the-matthew-tree-project.org