The Barbados Alliance for Ending Homelessness (BAEH) has announced a remarkable 65 per cent success rate in reintegrating homeless individuals back into society, the result of innovative housing and job placement programmes.
After describing 2024 as an achievement and challenge in addressing homelessness among men, the BAEH president Kemar Saffrey announced he is turning his attention to unhoused women and children in the new year.
He noted that the 24-hour shelter continues to yield positive results for stakeholders and clients of the organisation.
“The 24-hour shelter has been a highlight for individuals, preventing them from being left on the streets. We are able to keep them, provide counselling sessions, and offer the necessary care and services they need,” he told Barbados TODAY. “Our numbers indicate that we are seeing a 65 per cent success rate in terms of the transition back into mainstream society.”
But Saffrey stressed that the prevalence of homelessness in Barbados should still be seen as a significant concern for all citizens.
He said: “I don’t want Barbados to misunderstand; there is still a level of vagrancy and chronic homelessness that we continue to observe. Familiar faces are still appearing, and we are seeing individuals, in Bajan dialect, being ‘dirty’ on the street. These cases require further intervention and collaborative efforts from organisations to assist those individuals.
“For the year, I think we have faced more than 300 individuals affected by homelessness in one way or another.”
Saffrey further revealed that, in keeping with the BAEH’s goal of providing sustainable services, it plans to open a new shelter for women and children in 2025. “We want to focus our attention on the additional shelter we are looking into for women and children, which will be separate from this one in Bridgetown so that for the children’s sake, they can have more privacy and recreational space.”
He also noted that the clean-up initiative launched for the ICC Cricket World Cup earlier this year, which continued into the Crop Over season, is still going strong, providing a number of homeless individuals with jobs during events.
“We still have numerous job opportunities lined up, and individuals are reaching out to the organisation. I consider our success in terms of reintegration through the housing solution programme and our job initiative programme to be significant. We are observing rapid movement in terms of people being placed back into mainstream society,” he explained.
He mentioned the recent initiative called “Better Me Better Life” which focuses on housing solutions, savings, earnings, and reintegration into mainstream society.
Saffrey said: “Through these programmes, we are seeing huge success, with individuals turning their lives around, in many cases in less than a month after going through the programme. These are people who find themselves in situations of short-term or transitional homelessness.
“There is still a lot of work to do in the area of mental health. This remains a crucial issue that we need to address, and we are engaging with other stakeholders favourably on this. However, we can report improvement in our job placement and other programmes, with more people coming off the street.”
Saffrey expressed optimism that in 2025, Barbadians will recognise that homelessness is a complex, multifaceted issue requiring nuanced approaches and solutions.
He said: “Some people only see us as the organisation for the homeless, but there are different types of homelessness. Some individuals affected by HIV are facing homelessness, as well as those with disabilities and mental health issues. One of our goals for next year is to bridge the gaps between the various entities we engage with. We aim to ensure that everyone understands this is a collective approach.”
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