Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness with Wendy Lewington DENS

I get a buzz when I drive to work and I see one of our Dens posters up when I'm driving around Hemel Hempstead and I see our Dens van.

I am so proud of what we.

Do as a business community.

I know that business community is very proud of Dens as well.

Always wanting to get behind and support them.

Our local coffee shop in Hemel High street in the old town, they're big supporters of Dens and for me, that's just fantastic.

That gives me such a buzz.

Hello and welcome to Burko and Beyond.

On the show this week, Wendy Lewington, CEO of Dens.

Let's dive in.

Wendy Leamington, welcome to Burko and Beyond.

Thank you.

And thank you so much for having me here today.

It is a pleasure to have you here.

We have so many wonderful charities in the Burkhamstead area and Decorum and Denz is of course one of them.

And you're the first of the charities to be on the podcast.

So thanks for doing that.

I know a lot of people in the community know about Dens, but just give us an overview.

Yeah, absolutely.

And hopefully, you know, a lot of people will have heard of Dens and they'll probably know us either about our hostel or about our food bank because they're the most sort of prominent services and they will think of Dens about homelessness.

And we are, but we are actually much wider than that.

So Dens is really there to help anyone facing social exclusion, poverty or homelessness.

And we do have direct services, we do a lot of work.

We have a 44 bed hostel, we have a day center.

So we have those services directly working with people that are facing homelessness.

But more and more we're really focusing on prevention and really trying to tackle the root causes of homelessness.

So our new strategy and what we're really looking at is how we can prevent homelessness.

And that's really looking at poverty and social exclusion, providing direct services for those facing homelessness, but then supporting people once they've come to the end of their homelessness journey, supporting people in the community.

Because what we really want to do is prevent people coming back into homelessness and really breaking the cycle.

So we're there to meet people wherever they are on their journey and help them take that next positive step.

Really, it is a huge topic and it's a huge issue.

It's a huge challenge.

And I think that that approach to every part of the journey and not letting people fall back into homelessness, is there any point along that journey where there is a big challenge, there's one thing that can change it for them.

I think it's complex homelessness.

And this is going to sound silly, but homelessness is far more than just not having somewhere to live.

And it is really important that there's social and council housing out there, but just having more accommodation isn't the answer.

People that have homeless have often faced a lifetime of trauma.

And in our hostel, for example, we know that 70 to 80% of people in our hostel have had childhood trauma.

Wow.

Unless you deal with the root causes, you're not going to break the cycle.

And a lot of that is around mental health issues, drug and alcohol issues, and just supporting people to build the resilience and build their own skills so they can live independently.

I said that could be around mental health, that could be around budgeting, it could be about employment and also about the social exclusion.

We want to ensure that people play an active part in their community, because if someone's socially isolated, they become really vulnerable.

So it's so much more complex.

It's around that wraparound support that's so.

Important, because I think the perception, the misconception, conception perception, which, you know, I'm getting at, is, is that something's happened.

It's to those people that is their fault.

Yeah.

And that is, as you're describing, is often, in fact, probably always not, not the case.

Absolutely.

And it's a.

A societal issue.

And, I mean, what I'd like to do is do ourselves out of a job.

I'd love us not to have to exist in the future.

I. I don't think that's gonna happen, not in my lifetime anyway.

But that's why it's so important to look at, as I said, what the root causes are.

Look at how we can prevent people becoming homelessness and breaking the cycle.

But actually, I think it goes further than that.

It's looking at people's childhoods, it's looking at what support we provide around children, around mental health, it's looking at family breakdowns, it's looking at what leads someone into drug and alcohol.

If we can deal with all of that, yes, there will still be people that will have homelessness issues and will have issues in the future, but what we want to do is reduce the number of people we have to work with in the future.

So you've been at dens for nearly 10 years.

This is your 10 years.

That's fantastic.

And so I wonder how that strategy has changed over the years, because I guess traditionally, with Charities.

It was that sticking plaster of right, here's a, here's a blanket or here's a bed for the night kind of thing.

How and why has that changed over the years?

So what we've always really tried to do as an organization is really develop our services that are informed by the experiences of our clients.

But also listening to our frontline staff, our frontline staff knows what makes a difference.

You know, I'm lucky, I mean I'm the CEO of Charity of a size where if I go into our services, our clients know me, which is brilliant.

But I don't know day to day the stuff our frontline staff know and it was about six or seven years ago, our staff were saying to us, it's great that we provide all these services, but actually when people go into the community they don't have the life skills to be able to maintain a tenancy.

So we developed a whole program around life skills and it's literally while people at the hostel and helping them learn about basic cooking, cooking on a budget, how to maintain a tenancy.

And I know this sounds really basic, but how to keep their own space tidy.

Even looking at personal hygiene issues, all those issues, unless we tackle when they may be moving to a social or council housing, they're not going to be able to maintain that.

And that's really with our therapy service as well.

So we actually have an in house therapy service and it's.

We have a very experienced psychotherapist and it's open to our clients within our hostel and it's long term therapy which makes it very different than what can be provided on the nhs.

And that came about because we knew from our clients that's what they needed.

It started as a part time project.

We now have a full time therapist and eight counseling students on placement because we could see the difference that was making.

And it's also around our accommodation services as well.

Over the last year we have not just been full to capacity but we've had a waiting list.

So we're now looking at what other services we can provide in the community to reduce the waiting list.

So it's, I think with a charity the size we are, that we can be quite agile and that's quite important because the world changes and the world can change quite quickly and we need to be able to adapt to that.

It's crazy to me that there is a waiting list for a homeless hostel in the sense of.

It's crazy to think about that.

But obviously then you think, well of course, because if the Hostel's full.

Then where are they?

They're still rough sleeping.

Yeah.

We're quite lucky that we have actually really low rough sleeper numbers because we have a crash pad.

So literally in our hostel we have a room that mattresses go down on the floor.

So if has nowhere to stay, they can stay there.

And often people can find somewhere for a short period of time.

So it might be family and friends for a short period of time.

If they're a vulnerable person, then between us and the council, they will be found some type of temporary accommodation, whether it's a council property that's just for temporary accommodation, our crash pad, or even a B and B.

But that's very short term.

But we were in a position this year and late last year actually where there was a waiting list for the crash pad and we've never experienced that.

And over winter we turned our day center into a night shelter at night and our hostel was full, our crash pad was full and our night shelter was full.

And in my 10 years we've never experienced that.

And that's really concerning.

I think I might have just fallen into that trap of that misconception of homeless people are just rough sleepers who've got nowhere to go.

And it's not about that, is it?

As you say, it's about circumstance and it might be something that's, as you say, something that's happened in the home, whether that is violence or other kind of things.

So it's obviously it's a bigger social issue.

So how are you tackling that?

Presumably with other charities?

Absolutely.

And it's the hidden homeless and it's a term we often use and people have heard the term sofa surfing.

So it might be people staying with family and friends.

But what we've seen, and I think this is why we've seen an increase in demand since COVID Since COVID and the cost of living crisis, people can't afford to have people stay with them.

So sofa surfing, you know, having an extra adult in your house costs money and families can't maybe take the brother in law or the auntie or the uncle that might find themselves homeless for.

For longer.

I think also often, not often, but one of the key reasons for homelessness is family breakdowns.

And it's not just partners, it's family breakdowns between adult children and parents.

And having an adult child stay with you has a cost implication.

So I think that's also one of the reasons.

Cost of living doesn't just affect a family, it affects how they can support other families.

As well, if that makes sense.

And we do work with a number of other charities to try and see what we can do.

And that's around again.

Drug and alcohol support, mental health support, working with other homeless charities.

We're really lucky in decorum that we have a very supportive council and that really makes a difference and they're very proactive.

You mentioned Covid there and the change since then.

And also you mentioned this year being the first year that crash pad day center, like completely overbooked can do.

You look into the.

Obviously you look into the reasons behind that.

Yeah.

Do we know what it is?

We do look into it.

And what we do is look at the reasons why people are coming to us and we sort of.

You have to do that longitudinally.

You have to do that over a year or two.

And at the moment it's really hard to sort of identify our.

I'm not going to say our gut feeling, but our initial thoughts looking at the information and data is around cost of living.

We also have more people in our hostel that are actually working.

So it may be that that again is to relationship breakdowns and family breakdowns.

It's also, I think, and I said we're sort of interrogating the data more is even if you're working, people are financially struggling and if you were working full time and now working part time or if you're on a contract, I mean, zero hour contracts were not great at all and there's not so many of them now.

But there are still people whose hours might change on a weekly basis and that has implications.

Also rent in Hemel Hempstead, I mean, Burkhamsted, obviously we know rent's significant.

Rent in Hemel Hempstead is.

Is high, really high because we're so close to London and for people on benefits or people on a low income, it's really hard to get private rental.

We've actually just.

We launched a program yesterday, it started in November, we launched it yesterday about supporting people into private rental, but also supporting people that are at risk of eviction from private rental.

And landlords don't want to evict people, but they get very nervous about working with.

Yeah.

Or taking tenants that you might not have two adults working and rent in Hemel Hempstead, places go within four or five hours so they can actually choose who they want to choose.

Yeah.

So we're trying to widen that as well, but it is really difficult out there.

So how.

How do you tackle that?

Is it.

Is it.

So we're working with landlords we're working with landlords but we also offer them a support package.

Right.

So we will work with the clients and with the landlord.

So we're almost like a mediator between the two.

We will provide 247 property support.

We will ensure that if someone is on benefits, the benefits can be paid directly to the landlord.

Because landlords don't want to evict people, they just sometimes get quite overwhelmed.

And obviously with the Renters act things are changing quite considerably.

So it's sort of been that go between and providing more support for the landlords so it's easier for them.

So do you find as, as a, as a charity, effectively you're a business as well, right?

We are.

We're a business whose any, any surplus we make, if we do make any surplus is just fed back into the charity.

But you know, we are a business.

So when National Insurance came out it hit us.

It hit us like it hit everyone else.

Fuel costs go up.

That hits us both directly because we have a van, but also our suppliers costs go up, so that hits us.

The food bank donations have gone down, individual donations because cost of living hits families so they donate less.

The donations in general, like individual donations and business donations are interestingly, individual donations haven't gone down as much, but business donations are going down.

So it's, it's a perfect storm.

We have an increase in clients, an increase in people needing us and a decrease in the funding that's coming through.

As a perfect storm.

It seems to be they come along quite often these perfect storms, particularly in, in the area of homelessness and poverty.

Yeah.

So we're not going to fix it on this podcast, but it is.

How do you fix it?

Is the question I guess people keep asking is what can I do?

And do we just keep feeding a machine that's just keeps.

It seems cyclical, which obviously one of the big things you're talking about doing is keeping people in accommodation to break that cycle.

Yeah.

I mean all CEOs of charities are going to say we need money and you know, funding is so important.

But for me what Dens is about is funding long term solutions which why we focus on not just providing that immediate support but that prevention and that breaking the cycle.

And for people listening and watching this, you know that that monthly donation to an organization is really important to ensure we've got that constant stream of money coming through is really important.

Yeah.

So I, it, I've spoken to CAs of charities before and they say because that, that is, it's essentially like in a Business terms.

It's your retainer, isn't it?

Absolutely.

It's our bread and butter money.

Yeah.

It's what keeps everything going.

And then we can plan and funding cycles from, you know, whether it be government grants and trust making bodies, they them being longer term makes a big difference as well.

You know, I think things have changed.

We used to be more on position where you get one or two year funding.

It's very hard to plan on that.

So I think grant making bodies are getting better at sort of three year funding and I think it's people understanding that's what's needed.

But also with government funding and I think sometimes we can become a victim of our own success.

So we have very low rough sleeper numbers in decorum, which is brilliant.

And I think that is absolutely down to the work Dens does and Dens does with the local council.

But sometimes government funding is.

They will look at what the need is.

So if the rough sleeper numbers are high, they might get give that area more funding.

Well, don't take our funding because then in three years time our rough sleeper numbers will be high.

Oh, we're back to a cyclical figure.

Exactly.

So it's about.

And I do get there's limited funding, I do understand that.

But if a charity or program is going well, then don't not fund them.

I mean that's just ridiculous, isn't it?

Fund them so they can continue to do the work.

Definitely, definitely.

Take me inside then.

A day in the life of a charity CEO or of the den.

CEO.

Oh goodness, where do I start?

It is so.

I know it sounds very cliched but every day is different.

And I think when you're a CEO of a charity of den size, we're a small to medium term charity.

So my role is to lead the organization, to be strategic, to make sure we're compliant, to make sure there's good government governance and to ensure that we continue to provide really good effective services and liaising with key stakeholders.

Saying that over Easter a couple of staff off leave and you become quite operational and you know, every now and then I will go, I will pick up, I won't provide, I won't do a lot of frontline but you know, I might have to do frontline or I might have to be the encore for the evening.

So.

And I actually quite like making sure I constantly know what's going on the ground.

But it can be quite challenging.

You know, our senior leadership team is myself and three others.

We don't have this huge machine behind us.

And that's good because we can be agile and it means I know what's going on the ground.

But I also need to be strategic.

I need to influence our key stakeholders.

And decorum, like a load of other areas are about to go through some significant change.

Local government reorganization means that in two years time decorum isn't going to exist.

So myself and a lot of other charity CEOs are looking how that will impact on us.

I think that we seem to be saying the word misconception quite a lot, but there is a misconception that charity CEOs are, oh well, you do fundraising then how can I donate and how can I do things?

But essentially you are running that business.

Yeah, absolutely.

And as you said, like the cost of diesel, things like that, it's those economics which are affecting poverty and homelessness and the cost of living and affecting how you run a business.

So how are those day to day challenges met within the business?

So budgeting is always a challenge because for everyone it is a bit of a, you know, what is going to come through, what funds are going to come through.

But you know, we have a very tight, we have a very good fundraising team.

But every month, like any other leader of an organization, I'm looking at our budgets, I'm looking at what the trends are, I'm looking at what the, you know, what the income is, what expenditure is.

And that takes to be a good CEO and a good leader, even with a strong finance team.

And our finance team is one part time head of finance and two others is constantly looking at that.

And we will have, you know, hopefully we're not going to have to make any tough decisions this year.

But that's part of what we do.

You know, it is running a business.

And all charities are really being hit with having to look at making difficult decisions.

Fundamentally it's about what can we do to ensure we can keep providing the most important services and prioritizing our services and okay, if we know something needs to be done.

But is there another charity that does that really well?

So let's not duplicate.

And collaborating with other charities is key.

And not just other charities, other businesses, other organizations, other charities, because there is enough work for all of us out there.

Is there a WhatsApp group of charity CEOs?

There is several actually, yeah.

So I work very closely with other homeless charity CEOs in Hertfordshire.

I also work very closely with other charities at a range of charities in Decor.

And some of that is just about mutual support because like any CEO, it can be Quite isolating.

And I think it's very important to have that energy.

I always say to be a CEO of a charity you have to be at least half full, if not 3/4 full.

And every threat is an opportunity and it is keeping that energy up because our frontline staff deal with some really challenging issues and we can't forget that.

But it's making sure people be constantly positive about the organization.

I was going to ask you about that because there is the business mind and there are obviously emotions involved.

And how do you manage that?

I can't imagine how I would manage.

I'm a softie at heart.

I can't imagine how to manage those emotions on a day to day basis with a lot of the things that you must see that you wish you hadn't.

It's difficult.

But at the same time it's so important for me to never forget why DENS exists, why I'm a leader of a charity.

And you know, there's a couple of our clients that have been with us on and off for years.

And when I see them and when I know we're making a difference, that's so important to me.

You know, getting the funding in is really important.

Launching new services is really important.

But for me it's still very important that I go into a hostel and someone will say, hi Wendy.

And they'll stop me and say what's worked really well.

And you can't forget that.

You cannot forget what you are about and hearing the stories.

Stories.

So yesterday, as I said, we launched our private rental scheme and we had a video of a 55 year old man that had gone into private rental for the first time and he was talking about how Dens had changed his life.

I get goosebumps every time.

When I stop getting goosebumps, it's time to move on.

Because that's why we do the job and that's why we have the sleepless nights and that's why we make the tough decisions.

And I always think I'm incredibly lucky that we have a really good staff team and they never lose their empathy and they will always put our clients first.

And sometimes that's where the challenges come.

It's like we want to do this for our clients, okay, but I need to make sure we've got the budget to do that.

But you never want to lose sight of that.

And when you do lose sight of that, it's time to move on to something else.

And I guess you never want to put a solution in front of people that might need to be removed as well.

But sometimes, I guess there's no choice in that.

No.

And we've been lucky.

We've.

We've managed not to have to do that.

And it's always looking at how, as an organization, we can work smartly and what we can do and really focusing on what our mission is as an organization.

But over the last year, I've seen a number, and not just small charities, a number of charities have stopped working.

I've had to close the doors.

And that's really sad.

And that's not through mismanagement and that's not through bad leadership.

That's just the way things are at the moment.

I was talking to the CEO of a national charity who.

And the numbers, the numbers just to keep the doors open, just to keep the staff, as you say, because.

Not just because of national insurance, but because you, you've got a talented team and you need.

It's like any other business, you need to attract talent.

Right.

But the numbers involved in keeping something like that going.

I'll be.

Cost of staff.

Yeah.

And I don't have an issue with that at all.

And I think the days where people think people that work for charities or volunteering has changed.

We do have a number of very good volunteers, but if we don't pay our staff well, we're not going to get expertise and we're not going to be able to make a difference.

Also, we talk about a cost of living crisis.

We talk about supporting people in poverty and social exclusion.

I cannot have our staff needing to use a food bank.

You know, that would just.

That would be horrendous for me as a CEO for that.

So we need to make sure we support our staff, but we also need to ensure we support our staff around their mental health as well.

We use an employee assistance program, but we also make sure our staff have access to also professional supervision.

We always make sure our staff take their leave.

We have mental health wellbeing days where we get our staff together.

All those things are really important to ensure our staff come to work and not get burnt out.

Yeah.

But I also need to ensure my leadership team don't get burnt out as well.

Yeah.

And it's a, it's a big thing.

Again, a lot of business leaders talking about at the moment is the, the stopping that burnout because it's kept particularly for charities.

It's counterintuitive.

I mean, it's counterintuitive for any business.

Yeah.

How can we help as a, as a business community?

You've got some You've got some regular fundraising that goes on.

We've talked about, you know, if you can, you know, donate, put something aside every month, that's always great.

So there's a number of different things, you know, so even just being part of our event.

So we have the Castle Walk coming up on the 14th of June in Berkhamstead.

Starting off at the castle as a 5 mile and 10 mile.

All the information is on our website, dens.org.uk we have a number of events like that.

You know, we'll have the sleep out.

We have 20 people running in the London Marathon.

Amazing.

Which is fantastic.

And we have London Marathon places for the next four years.

Companies can run their own events, individuals can donate, companies can donate.

We have a business program so companies can sign up to being regular givers.

So there's the fundraising, whether it's individual businesses or being part of events, but it's also about promoting dens.

It's also about organizations and individuals being champions for dens and, and just sort of promoting what we do.

It can also be with the Food bank.

You know, when you go shopping, chuck a couple of extra tins in.

I mean, we, we say when we go shopping, most of us do it online now, but it doesn't have to.

Be, it's even easier to do that.

You just add them to the car.

Literally just add another.

On our website, we will have a high needs list of things we need and it can be an extra carton of, you know, the own brand squash.

Yeah.

It can be a tin of soup, it can be.

There's a range of different things, beans,.

Pulses, things like that.

It doesn't have to be really expensive things, cleaning products.

So our food bank doesn't just provide food.

People need to clean the house.

And so those products, toiletry products are really important.

And the toiletry products might be, you know, it could be sanitary towels, it could be shower gels, it could be shampoos and they will go into food bank parcels, but will also for our clients that are within our services.

So there's quite a range of different things people can do.

Where can we donate those, Wendy?

So a lot of supermarkets will actually have donation sites for our food bank.

Tesco's, Waitrose, all the usuals, they can be brought up to the food bank.

Companies might want to have their own collection points.

Our fundraising team will happily support people to do that.

Most definitely.

Brilliant.

How did you get involved in this, this section, in this, this area then?

Wendy, you've been at dens for 10 years I detect only a slight accent,.

A twang of an Australian accent.

So I was.

Interestingly, I was actually born in Aylesbury, my dad's from Tring, my mum's Irish, but my mum and dad actually met in Burkhamstead and then when I was six, we were ten pound poms and were carted off to Australia, to Perth.

My family have always, particularly, my dad has always really focused on empowering disempowered people.

My dad was a bricklayer but he was also a union official, so there was always that working to ensure people were looked after and my parents always did quite a lot of volunteering work.

I actually trained as a psychologist in Australia and Australia, you see now you.

Started talking about Australia.

Snakes out there.

And I actually worked in prisons and worked with people, drug and alcohol issues.

And then when I was 25, I did the I'll just go to London for six months and then met a boy and stayed here.

But I've always worked, whether it was as a psychologist or when I came over here, I've always worked in the Chamberlain sector and I've always worked with disenfranchised or disempowered people, whether it be offenders, youth offenders, children in care and care leavers and then for the last 10 years in homelessness.

Fantastic.

And what's.

What, what brought you back to the area, to Berkhamstead?

Boy.

It's always a boy or a girl, isn't it?

I live locally, I live in Leighton Buzzard and yeah, I came there, up.

I moved there with someone numerous years ago but my husband now actually was originally from Berkhamstead and it's, it's.

I really like.

I don't live in decorum and actually in with our client group.

Sometimes it's quite nice.

Not necessarily living directly where you work.

Yes.

But I like the fact that I live and work fairly local and you know, I get sort of a buzz when I drive to work and I see one of our dens posters up, you know, when I'm at work and driving around Hemel Hempstead and I see our dens van, I am so proud of what we do.

I really get a buzz from seeing that.

And when I go into our local coffee shop in Hemel High street in the Old Town and they're big supporters of dens and for me that's just fantastic.

That gives me such a buzz.

Brilliant.

And if I may say, as a business community, I know that business community is very proud of dens as well and always wanting to get behind and support them.

Wendy, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Just reminders.

We've got the Castle Walkway, we've got.

The castle Walk on 14 June.

It's a 5 mile and 10 mile so suitable for families and there's always a range of events.

There's actually the Hemel Hempstead 5k and 10k run.

I'm gonna say May 17th I should know cause I'm doing it.

We'll put it in the show notes.

But yeah jump on our website and there's always a range of fundraising opportunities.

Wendy, thank you for being on the Berco and Beyond podcast.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

It's been great.

Thanks.

Thanks for watching this week's episode of Berco and Beyond.

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