The Our Way Leeds (or OWL) service was “born” on the 1^st July 2020, just after the first UK lockdown. There has been a tremendous amount of growth to the service during the first two years of its life, a remarkable achievement considering the circumstances surrounding the time of its birth.

OWL staff (those working in the service previously known as Flagship) never stopped doing face to face visits throughout lockdown and went straight into developing OWL. COVID-19 delayed some of the development of the OWL service, but our staff continued to work tirelessly throughout. We’re proud to say that now, two years down the line, we have all the properties needed and all but one of our OWL 24/7 schemes up and running. Our final 24/7 scheme is due to open in Autumn.

What we’ve achieved so far

Throughout the past two years, the OWL service has grown in lots of other areas too. Some highlights include:

• The opening of a new OWL hub in the South of the City which means we now have a hub in the East, West and South of Leeds, making it more easily accessible for young people wherever they may live.
• A prevention service has been established, which includes support to sustain housing, access to welfare advice, mediation, counselling, wellbeing activities, and helping young people with training and employment.
• Activities and drop-in sessions have been established so those young people who are currently bidding for properties or are on our waiting list can gain ongoing wellbeing support and any crisis can be picked up immediately.
• We’ve added domestic abuse and intensive support workers to the service to help those young people who need more specialist support.

What’s next?

Future developments include co-location with LCC partners at the East Hub and, as we work with many 16 and 17 year old’s, OWL will need to meet new Housing Support Ofsted Standards for Young Persons Accommodation. We know we are well prepared to meet these challenges and as OWL continues to grow and develop, our young person’s voice and influence group will continue to feed into the ongoing development of what has become a fantastic and vital service for the city, helping over 1000 young people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness across the city.

Julia Preston, CEO of GIPSIL (lead partner for OWL), says, “It’s been a challenging but brilliant two years and I’d like to thank all our staff, volunteers and partners who are involved in nurturing OWL and have led it to become the service it is today.”