To receive an overview of the work of the new charity based in Windsor by Nick Roberts.

Nick Roberts, from “The Know How” informed the forum that they were a new charity based in Windsor which was newly formed in January 2018 and was managed by Nick and his colleague Michael James. The project is organised to run for three days a week as a homeless project. He highlighted that most of the service user were homeless and were from surrounding areas. The project had an advocacy service for supporting those with issues relating to housing, health care, and addictions. It was intended that support groups would be formed to help support clients. Referrals were made via ‘The Know How’ website and it was noted that these referral numbers were increasing daily. The Forum were told that the charity had active social media streams and that this was looked after by Helen Price. It was also highlighted that the Facebook page and Twitter streams had good engagement from service users and that the community pages on Facebook had proved to be popular. It was noted that there were also designated pages for additions and support for young mothers.

Forum Members were told that the ambition for ‘The Know How’ was to create a peer led group, have a visible shopfront and to carry out outreach work. It was noted that as a result of the advocacy service that good links with the RBWM housing department had formed and that there had been significant improvements made for service users. The charity was currently in communication with Bracknell Forrest Homes regarding potential void housing or hard to let housing for their vulnerable service users. It was noted that there had been a private donation of £10,000 to the project but that this would only fund the project until September/October. The project would seek to attain funding through RBWM and intended on bidding for funding.

Members of the forum were happy to help promote the service and for their details to be exchanged with the newly formed charity.