The challenge of job integration for homeless people

According to the latest INSOCAT report on Housing and Residential Exclusion , published in April 2022, 97% of people served by social entities in Catalonia have housing problems. In total, 1.3 million Catalans live in inadequate housing (substandard housing, overcrowding or temporary structures) and almost a million more live in unsafe housing (occupations, temporary, with the threat of eviction or violent threats). In addition, 18,000 people live in a situation of homelessness. Housing is today a major driver of social exclusion.

There are multiple factors, both individual and structural, that are related to the difficulty of accessing decent housing, including the lack of social protection, administrative irregularity, previous residential and employment precariousness or the lack of support networks. The groups most affected by these situations are migrants, families with children and adolescents, single-parent households and young people alone. Homelessness is a structural problem that requires a comprehensive approach from a broad Governance, which includes the different social agents and professional figures.

Given that many of the causes of the current crisis of access to decent housing are structural and systemic in nature, the responses that can be given to homelessness and residential exclusion are as necessary as they are insufficient. This is why dialogue and coordination between administrations and social entities is essential.

In this search and testing of comprehensive intervention models, since 2018 at Training and Work we have participated in different intervention projects to fight residential exclusion that apply the Housing First methodology, which is based on the comprehensive approach to people from a standardized and stable environment, housing, that respects and channels the vital expectations of the beneficiaries.

The role of our foundation in these projects is to apply our expertise in the socio-labor support of the beneficiaries who are in a position to face a training and insertion itinerary.

Networking between the linked entities becomes essential to guarantee an intervention that takes into account all aspects of the person: health, education, critical factors of exclusion... The ultimate goal is that they can achieve personal and work autonomy that allows them to leave the program to make way for other people.

We provide support through the development of integration itineraries . Integration itineraries are a set of activities or actions aimed at improving a person's employability; they are a personalized process of orientation, training and integration.

Our labor integration model is based on a series of aspects:

Comprehensive intervention , with a multidimensional approach, that is, taking into account all those aspects of the person that are interrelated: personal, family, educational, health, housing, etc.; to achieve this we work in coordination with other professionals (networking ).

• Tutorial support , as the backbone of the entire intervention, where the professional figure of the tutor is fundamental: he welcomes, accompanies, guides, advises, motivates.
• Training (professional, basic and transversal) as a key element for improving skills, present at an individual and group level.
• Understand employment as a key integration tool , from which to articulate a process of normalization/inclusion in other spheres.
• Empowerment as a key element so that each person is an active protagonist in their own process and not a passive subject.
• Integration and social and cultural roots as a success factor for achieving full incorporation into the community.

In our intervention, we use the competency model as a reference: the process on which our proposal is based is based on the identification and development of the necessary competencies in the personal and work context, that is, the set of personal resources, capacities, abilities, skills, knowledge, preferences, interests that each person has and that, when applied to the professional context, facilitate access to and maintenance of a job.

The actions that configure the insertion itinerary are:

Tutorial follow-up

Tutoring is the backbone that allows it to be personalized. With this tool, the participant and the technical person or insertion tutor design and monitor the work plan, reflecting, establishing objectives, promoting decision-making, evaluating results and integrating new skills and learning. In the context of the tutoring, we carry out:

• In-depth interview; data collection, professional and life history, expectations...
• Occupational diagnosis/skills assessment.
• Itinerary agreement: where the rights and duties of each party are established. Commitment is the key element to work on.
• Work plan: dynamic and evaluable and under continuous construction, reflecting the objectives to be achieved, the actions to be taken, the deadlines...
• Continuous monitoring and evaluation: throughout the process, readjusting the objectives if necessary, and always with the person.

Activities

The activities that make up the itinerary must allow the person to identify and develop those key skills that allow them to acquire autonomy, strengthen their self-confidence, identify their interests and strengths, and develop personally and professionally.

Based on the tutorial support, it is agreed which skills improvement actions, individual or group, the person will carry out, and which are reflected in the Personal Work Plan. We work on the skills with the aim of ensuring that each person becomes aware of the moment in which they are and where they want to be, that they acquire confidence and greater autonomy and are able to identify their interests and motivations towards the job search based on their knowledge and experiences.

The activities that make up the itinerary may include professional training (for learning or improving a trade), actions to improve basic skills (especially digital training or language improvement) and improvement of transversal skills (relationship, coping, identification, access to employment, etc.) that are useful for all areas of life; we work on this with capsules and monographs such as: teamwork, conflict resolution, skills valued at work (initiative, responsibility, etc.).

Support for active job search

When it is assessed that the person participating in an itinerary is prepared to be a candidate for job offers, we establish a joint strategy of actions to facilitate the person's access to the job offers generated by the professional prospecting team, which seeks alliances with companies to facilitate the hiring of the people we accompany.

It is important to keep in mind that not all the people we accompany are currently working. The homeless group is characterized by accumulating exclusion factors that condition or prevent, temporarily or, in some cases, definitively, their incorporation into the world of work: health problems, administrative irregularity, lack of key basic skills (without schooling, without mastery of the language), single mothers with work-life balance problems... In these cases, the itinerary focuses on providing training resources appropriate to their needs, which facilitate their social integration and, if possible, if the limiting factors are overcome, their labor integration.

The key to achieving the effectiveness of this intervention model is to guarantee comprehensive support that facilitates the recovery of the situation and the future project of each person. INSULA and VESTA are examples of shared work projects in which we participate in alliance with other social entities ( Sant Joan de Deu Serveis Socials Barcelona, ​​Cáritas Diocesána de Barcelona , ​​Fundació Mambré ) and contributions from public bodies. The common denominator of these projects, which apply the Housing First methodology, is comprehensive intervention (social, labor, housing, health, etc.) giving a collective and coordinated response to a collective and complex problem.