> life in lozells

By Sarah Napier, Support Worker – Midland Heart.

Many of you reading this will already be familiar with the location of  173 Lozells Road, a supported housing scheme for formerly homeless customers run by housing and care organisation Midland Heart.  But how many of you know what goes on inside?

Here at 173 Lozells Road, there are 22 self contained apartments for single adults over the age of 25.  We work really hard to provide the right support tailored to individual needs to help people to live independent and happy lives.

There is sometimes a stigma attached this type of housing, but my experience of working here is very different.  Our customers are people looking for stable accommodation and staying with us enables them to have the right support to help them get back on their feet.

There are 6 support workers who staff the scheme 24 hours a day, we provide all the support needed to move people onto sustainable tenancies. This can include help with addiction, relationship breakdown or language barriers. We also work in partnership with other agencies and refer many customers onto other services.  All of this together works really well – our goal is to help an individual in any way we can to get them to the point they are able to manage their own tenancy.

We have recently started to plan a program of activities to add to what we already do; such as a DVD night, an english class, and a coffee morning twice a week.

These are really popular and we are looking to increase the number of activities.  We are also at the very early stages of developing a garden space. The idea is to have an informal space for the residents to relax and enjoy, we would like to have some raised beds to plant food and flowers. Watch this space for further developments!

If you would like to hear more about what we do or would like to become involved, please contact me at sarah.napier@midlandheart.org.uk It would be great to hear from you!