Dedicated ‘Welcome Backpacks’ to be given out to children experiencing homelessness thanks to funding from One Stop

Children experiencing homelessness are desperately in need of essential items as well as items to provide comfort and entertainment. This grant will allow us to provide dedicated Welcome Backpacks for children, ensuring that at a time of great uncertainty, children feel seen and looked after. This has been made possible through funding from the One Stop Community Partnership Programme and Groundwork. 

Families and children experiencing homelessness have extremely limited funds, often arriving in temporary accommodation with no possessions of their own having experienced major disruption in their lives. These packs will be age appropriate and include essential items as well as items to provide comfort and entertainment. We have received £940 in funding, which has allowed us to purchase items for 50 Welcome Backpacks.

The packs will provide familiar essential items which will help children to feel more comfortable during their first night in a new place, as well as activities to keep children occupied whilst parents and carers deal with paperwork and the induction process. The inclusion of toothbrushes and toothpaste in the packs helps to enable children to keep up with their health and hygiene, allowing them to maintain routines which are important in helping children to feel safe and secure.

The Welcome Packs will be distributed at our Families Open Space sessions which are fortnightly and open to all families living in temporary accommodation in Leicester. The running of these sessions is funded separately. The Families Open Space is a safe space for families to share their experiences, build peer connections, and contribute insight that has been fed back through wider city networks.

Families and children face a great deal of uncertainty as they wait for more secure housing to become available, which can impact their mental health and wellbeing. Their education and development can also be severely impacted. For the last year we have been running our regular Families Open Space, which has become a vital source of support for families across Leicester.

If you’d like to find out more about the work that we are doing with families experiencing homelessness in Leicester, please email jessamynwitthaus@actionhomeless.org.uk