Foundations for Life is an innovative partnership between LandAid and Centrepoint which aims to deliver real help to homeless young people in order to turn their lives around and progress to independent adulthood, with their own career and home.

The programme will, over a four year period, provide up-to-date learning facilities, courses of training in useful skills for life and work, support in getting into work with training in the property industry and in finding and moving into a new home in the private sector.

During the course of the programme, Foundations for Life training, work and housing opportunities will be provided for several thousand homeless young people who are the most isolated from mainstream education and work, and who have the most complex needs.

The ‘Foundations for Life’ partnership brings together Centrepoint’s experience of developing life-changing services for homeless young people, with the property industry’s capacity, through LandAid, to provide key practical and financial contributions.

Our vision for the Foundations for Life programme comprises four broad programmes:

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  • Finding a Home
  • Personal Support
  • Developing Skills
  • Work, and the Apprentices Programme

Each element will draw in contributions from a range of partners:

• LandAid will provide funding to upgrade and provide spaces within Centrepoint facilities which are dedicated to young people’s preparation for their future life and work.

• Aid will also fund learning workers to deliver a programme of training and development to help every young person develop practical and social skills for life and work.

• We will establish a programme of partnership with employers who can provide “taster days” for young people, short work experiences in their sector, opportunities for longer term work with training, or fully-fledged apprenticeships.
• Partnerships will be established with agencies which will give accreditation to training delivered by learning workers, providing the young person with a firm foundation in the route to more academic training and achievement, and with colleges who offer suitable and accessible academic courses in basic and occupational skills

• We will develop a programme of volunteering, in partnership with employers, which will offer young people friendship, role models, enjoyable activity, mentoring and a bridge between dependence on social care and housing provision and a fully independent adult life.