A year ago, Paul was living on the streets. Every morning, at around 8.30am, from a secluded corner at the top of the high street, he would watch dozens of teenagers pile off the city bus and head into the local further education college.

Seeing the students, Paul would think about his own lack of qualifications and imagine how different life might be if the circumstances surrounding his education had been different.

A year later, Paul no longer sits and watches the students go into college every day - he is too busy going to college himself.

Paul’s story may seem unusual, even unattainable for many homeless people. But across the UK, a number of colleges and charitable organisations are actively seeking to re-engage those without homes, or those who have experienced homelessness, with education.

The benefits of these schemes for somebody like Paul are clear. But what do colleges get out of the arrangement? Should more FE institutions be thinking about what they can do to re-engage homeless adults? And what exactly does the process involve?

According to Maggie Murphy, senior curriculum manager at Glasgow Kelvin College, offering provision for homeless adults isn’t simply a “nice to have”, it’s an absolute must. She believes that it is part of the college’s duty to help homeless adults who are living in the local community.

“If we are a community college, which we absolutely are, then we need to support the needs of the community and of the people within the local community,” she says.

Glasgow Kelvin College is located in the north-east of the city, an area that Murphy says is “associated with low educational attainment, high unemployment and high levels of poverty”.

“As a college, it is our responsibility to respond to that,” she says.

Tailored provision

In order to fulfil this responsibility, the college has worked hard to make sure that it is able to provide courses tailored to the needs of homeless adults. That means provision that is highly focused and flexible.

“The key thing is equipping people with the skills, or enhancing the life skills they have got, in a formally articulated way so that they can develop their own pathways and develop their own careers,” Murphy explains.

So, what does that entail? The college runs a range of courses supporting up to 60 homeless adults a year. The courses run two days a week in 12-week blocks, and the subjects range from personal development and employability to an introduction to psychology and counselling. Learners can sign up for one or all of the classes.

After 12 weeks, course leaders ask the students for feedback and the subjects taught or teaching methods used are adapted accordingly. The focus is on giving the learners routine and structure while building their skills to encourage pathways into further education or into the workplace.

This bespoke approach to the curriculum is crucial, says Murphy, but the college did not determine this on its own. Before establishing the courses, Murphy spent a lot of time with The Marie Trust, a local charity that supports the homeless to determine which skills would be most useful for learners to gain.

“We wanted to make sure that we could translate the needs [of homeless adults] into a curriculum. It needed to be accredited, flexible and with pathways for progression. It also needed to offer the wellbeing and pastoral wraparound support on funding and finance, to ensure that students would be able to maintain a place on the college programme,” she says.

This wraparound support is key. As Murphy points out, provision needs to be specialised - it can’t just be the same offering that works for the average college learner.

For instance, St Mungo’s, a charity tackling homelessness in London, provides education through its Recovery College, where homeless adults, or those who have experienced homelessness, can take part in more than 20 classes five days a week, including arts and crafts, digital skills, English and maths.

James Carroll, deputy manager of digital inclusion at Recovery College, says that any learning provision for these adults must understand and respond to the needs they have outside of, as well as inside, education.

For example, when the coronavirus pandemic forced the Recovery College to shut its buildings, the team worked with Clarion Housing and Tesco Mobile to provide smartphones and other digital devices for learners to ensure they could continue with their courses remotely (see box, below).

Yet staff also recognised that these learners might not be able to automatically use the devices - something that you could take for granted with the average college learner.

“We sent out leaflets that explained how to use smartphones, laptops and tablets and how to do the main things like open up a text message, click on the ‘join in’ link, open up an email,” says Carroll. “We spent a lot of time over the phone trying to support those who hadn’t experienced technology before.”

An understanding of the specific needs of homeless adults is a prerequisite for devising any programme that aims to re-engage these learners in education, then.

However, it can be a challenge to arrive at such an understanding because the problems homeless people face are often complex - issues around addiction, for example - and come with no easy answers.

The Workers Education Association (WEA), a UK-wide adult education provider, does work specifically in this area. In the North West, it has partnered with Endurance, a charity supporting recovering alcoholics and addicts, to provide a course that helps homeless adults to develop their understanding of the communities they live in and the support networks available to them, and to explore the role that they can play within society.

The programme primarily takes place on residential trips to Wales. Groups of clients are brought together and driven to North Wales, where they then undertake a series of team-building and counselling exercises over the course of two weeks.

One of the most important aspects of the programme is the work that comes before the trip, however. Course leaders spend time with learners, gaining their trust before enrolling them, says Ray Bullock, a WEA tutor and founder of Endurance.

“Recovering addicts can be quite sensitive to other people and, if they’ve never engaged in education before and don’t know how to mix with others, throwing them in the deep end can be really overwhelming. It takes a lot of courage for them to come to us and say they want to get involved,” he says.

“To begin with, we work with them as a group, so they can get to know each other and get to know us. We do things like taking them to the local beach and do some exercises there. I teach tai chi and get them to do that, but that’s just the fun bit. The main thing is that they get to know each other and trust each other.”

Trust is key

Murphy agrees that building trust prior to learning is essential. At Glasgow Kelvin, she gives learners a twilight tour of the college (in the evening, when the college is empty)before they start classes. Learners are shown where their classrooms and the canteen are, and they are introduced to their teachers to build their confidence and trust in staff.

This trust is crucial to the success of the programme, Murphy suggests, as is a real commitment to flexibility. Colleges need to accept that learners may not be able to follow a course in one continuous straight line - the provision should be more fluid, allowing learners to hop on and hop off as their circumstances change.

“We don’t assume people would stay for the year and we allow them to select the elements of the programme that they want to study. And if they drop away, we don’t withdraw them. Instead we offer additional support to bring them back in,” Murphy says.

The thing that all three providers agree on is the importance of building a community for the learners. Carroll points out that while homelessness, addiction and recovery can be isolating, education can improve wellbeing through helping people to form positive relationships with others.

“We have got one client who actually is employed but she doesn’t have any friends, her social networks are very limited. She’s very isolated and she’s very, very lonely. She uses the courses at the college to not only develop her skills but to get that interaction with other people,” he says.

“We’ve got lots of courses that allow space for clients just to meet and discuss with their peers and provide that social interaction.”

Of course, offering this kind of specialised provision takes time, effort and understanding. So, is it all worth it?

Murphy, Carroll and Bullock all believe it is. They point to the enormous impact that flexible, consistent and varied education can have on the lives of homeless adults.

To illustrate this, Bullock shares a story of a former student of his, James. Eight years ago, James was rough sleeping and heavily involved in drink and drugs. He heard about the work that WEA did while he was staying at a hostel. He asked to go on one of the residentials and, while on it, he thrived and realised that he was really talented at supporting people.

With the confidence that he had built on the residential, and with the support of the people he met through the course, he went on to complete further training at the WEA and eventually got a university degree.

Today, he works at a rehab and recovery clinic in North Wales.

Murphy says that she has seen similar transformations. Often, the students she supports express a desire to give back to the community, whether that means supporting homeless adults on their own journeys or giving back to the college itself. Knowing that she is part of this positive cycle makes the work worthwhile to her.

“These are people with hugely significant life experience who, with a little bit of support and guidance, could actually really go on and become the lecturers, the youth workers, the teachers, the advocates going forward,” she says.

Kate Parker is an FE reporter at Tes

This article originally appeared in the 4 December 2020 issue under the headline “Flexible FE for homeless adults who want to learn”. Names in this feature have been changed