Threshold open new supported accommodation project to address the complex needs of vulnerable women in Swindon

The homeless charity are working to help support and accommodate Swindon's most vulnerable women.

Threshold acquired an additional property this year in order to accommodate and support women who, for one reason or another, became homeless, sleeping rough and engaged in sex working within Swindon’s Broadgreen area.

Threshold’s latest project house will focus on supporting women, through specialist interventions, whose complex health conditions, substance dependence, mental health support needs and other vulnerabilities had, until now, seen such individuals face enormous obstacles in finding and sustaining accommodation.

Threshold’s chief executive, Michael Keenan, said: “This project house is unique in that it is the first of its kind in Swindon, established to address the needs of homeless women, with multiple identified vulnerabilities, who desperately seek to exit rough sleeping and engage with medical and psychological treatments that address the physical and emotional trauma they have been subjected to and experienced in profoundly impactful ways.

"If left untreated, ill health and trauma will typically entrench these individuals in a downward cycle of misery and suffering. We are further developing move-on and retreat facilities with partners, that will be available to all Threshold service users, that will support recovery from addiction and emotional trauma."

Michael added: “Threshold will actively address, through this and associated projects we are developing, the enormous rise over the past two years in the numbers of homeless women entering or remaining in sex work and significantly reduce the duration of time that these women spend sleeping rough. For Threshold, it was imperative to launch this initiative as the project is absolutely essential to try and prevent further deaths and further misery on so many levels."

Updates on the project and its development will soon be included on Threshold’s website: www.thl.org.uk

To follow the work Threshold undertake, visit their Facebook page @THLSwindon.

Members of the public can support the project by making a donation via bank transfer to ‘Threshold’s A Chance To Change Fund’: Sort Code 230580 Acc.No. 42468142