About A Home of Her Own

Coventry has seen an extraordinary rise in the number of homeless people and in temporary accommodation in the last few years. The 2019 report ‘Home of Her Own’ by Women’s Budget Group (produced in collaboration with Coventry Women’s Partnership, of which Kairos WWT is a member) identified that for “Coventry, as in most of the country, housing benefit is not covering full rents in any of the bedroom entitlements – even for the cheapest rents”. The Covid-19 pandemic and cost of living crisis has further heightened the local housing, particularly for women, who require trauma-informed, women-centred solutions.

Aside from refuge services for women fleeing domestic violence (which are already oversubscribed and have risk criteria that often excludes many of the women we support), there are currently limited women-only accommodation options for females in Coventry.

Kairos WWT are proud to be leading the way in the fight to end women’s homeless in Coventry with the A Home of Her Own service, which supports women subject to or at risk of sexual exploitation, who are homeless or facing homelessness, to secure and maintain safe, suitable accommodation. As part of our involvement in “Coventry Women’s Partnership”, we contributed to research conducted by The Women’s Budget Group, which resulted in the “A Home of Her Own: housing and women” report being launched to Parliament in 2019. To find out more please check out: A Home of Her Own: Housing and Women – Womens Budget Group (wbg.org.uk)

Our Specialist Housing Practitioner provides expert homelessness and housing (H&H) knowledge and advice to the wider team and acts as the organisational H&H lead and single point of contact internally and externally. The role includes developing and maintaining key operational partnerships with local agencies to better meet the needs of women, and contributing to working groups and forums to represent Kairos WWT and the needs of our service users. She takes the lead in advocating for positive systemic change on a local, regional, and national level to ensure that women have access to women-centred, trauma informed housing support and safe and suitable accommodation.

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