Lifewise welcomes the Government’s announcement that $300 million will be spent on extra investment and increased support to prevent homelessness. We are also keen on progressing the ongoing involvement of people with lived experience of homelessness.
Lifewise is one of the founding partners in the Housing First Auckland City Centre program. Lifewise works with rough sleepers in Auckland city centre who are known to their services and who have been chronically homeless for several years.
Lifewise has also been one of three national providers for the Supported Living contract for Oranga Tamariki for the past 3 years.
Lifewise’s focus is on innovative solutions and includes the development of preventative models that can keep people from ending up homeless in the first place.
“Through our work we know that prevention is key to ensuring homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring,” says Lifewise Community Services Manager, Peter Shimwell.
“We also know from our experience and work with Housing First that personalised wrap around support is a necessary component of any strategy.
“We need to connect homelessness with its root causes, and that means an open conversation about the link between homelessness and our housing crisis and the link between homelessness and family poverty.”
Lifewise services work with people with lived experience in both implementation and design of programs. Lifewise services support everyone from families and their children, older people and youth experiencing homelessness, as well as people sleeping rough, to ensure that homelessness is rare, brief, and non-recurring.
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Editor’s notes
Lifewise is an Auckland-based community social development organisation, who develop new ways to solve challenging social issues
Focusing on the principle of interdependence rather than independence or dependence, Lifewise works to provide sustainable solutions to social issues, which attempt to address the root causes of social isolation and disadvantage.
Lifewise’s work has a number of focuses including ending homelessness, offering quality early childhood education to all, ensuring good quality foster care for children in need, running community-focused Merge Cafe and working with partners to provide safe, affordable housing.
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