As we celebrate 10 years of Kineara, we’ve launched our 2022 Impact Report which captures the difference we’ve made to people’s lives through our services since 2012.
Over the last decade, Kineara has reached nearly 1200 individuals in 600 households to break down barriers to secure housing, avoid homelessness, tackle financial hardship and access income, find employment, and receive meaningful support for their emotional wellbeing.
Holistic working has been central to the difference we’ve made in people’s lives and the meaningful support we’ve delivered, be it through intensive short programmes, drop-in support or long-term interventions. We’ve worked with people from the ages of 4 to 72 from all kinds of backgrounds and experiences in more than 15 partnerships across London, and created tailored activities that make the crucial difference to each individual in their most challenging of times. Over 250 households have been supported to avoid evictions, sustain tenancies, move out of temporary accommodation, and find a new and suitable home. Hundreds more have been supported with advocacy around disrepair or adapted homes, registering for social or supported housing, accessing housing benefits and discretionary housing payments.
Most recently, our Southwark Private Renters Project has raised over £4000 in additional income for households to cover move-in costs, buy furniture or household essentials, access the internet, travel and buy food and clothing. We’ve supported households to access discretionary housing payments and grants, and partnered with local and national organisations to provide SIM cards, mental health support, Christmas packages and employment/training opportunities. We’ve mediated with landlords and worked with solicitors in cases of unlawful behaviour in a third of cases, and found new homes with longer tenancies at a manageable rent for 20 families who had been facing homelessness.
In addition, we’ve provided over 100 intensive programmes and 30 counselling services to primary aged pupils from low-income households in the last decade, working closely with them and their parents to manage over 30 different holistic concerns, improving communication and emotional wellbeing in pupils and providing additional wraparound care to both parents and the school community.
Our work complex because the poverty makes the lives of the people we meet complex. Food, fuel, furniture, digital poverty can’t be separated. And structural realities like immigration status; health conditions and disability; experience of care, prison or homelessness; race and gender discrimination, also can’t be managed in isolation because of how they intersect. A single family may be facing many interwoven challenges that all contribute in some way to, for example, being housing insecure. To make a meaningful difference we put people in charge of the support they receive, and support them however we can to provide a surer footing than when we first met them.
Maria Morgan, our Director, says: “In the middle of these challenging waves of change, Kineara’s lighthouses have helped us stand through these stormy times.
Lighthouses for me represent stability, safety, guidance, direction, and hope. Kineara values and vision are our lighthouses: integrity, trustworthy, purpose-led, teamwork, partnership, holistic, community focused, impactful, consistent, hopeful, belief and faith.
Our hope is Kineara continue to be a lighthouse for the people and community we are so blessed to serve. Thank you for your support and belief in what we do here at Kineara. Here is to another 10 years and more of breaking down barriers.”
You can read the 2022 Impact Report here.
You can follow more updates on our impact here.
