Investing in communities

Our Positive Futures scheme is a FREE service exclusive to St Vincent’s tenants.

Positive Futures provides one to one advice and guidance to help tenants to retrain, find the right courses, build confidence, apply for jobs and make sure you will be better off in work. We are able to visit tenants at your convenience in your own homes ensuring a personal service tailored to suit individual needs.

To find out more about our postive futures scheme click here.

If you would like to refer yourself onto this scheme you can fill in the online form here, or download a referral form here.

We also set up and manage funded projects which may tackle worklessness, social exclusion, community cohesion or environmental projects.

Our money management scheme is a FREE service to tenants offering guidance, support & signposting to help tenants to maximise their money.

Offering home visits with tailored advice to suit individual needs, including:

• Budgeting
• Setting up a bank account
• Using a Credit union
• Home contents Insurance
• Energy saving
• Financial health check

To find out more about our money management scheme click here or to refer yourself onto this scheme you can fill download a referral form here.

St Vincent’s runs an Ucan Centre in the Moses Gate area of Farnworth in Bolton.  The aim of the centre is to provide a community focal point, where all residents can access much needed services and training. The Ucan Centre runs a number of programmes including English for Speakers of Other Languages courses, a Computer suite with FREE Internet access as well as providing meeting rooms for local communities groups and crèche facilities. There is a range of information available at the Centre from local jobs to educational and recreational classes. The Local Police Community Support Officers, help writing a CV and setting up your own business can all be accessed through the Ucan.

St Vincent’s Housing Association has always sought the views of its tenants through its local walkabouts, customer panels, customer conferences and focus groups, from our sheltered schemes to our young people’s foyers.

We have a dedicated member of staff who works with tenants to help set up residents groups, home watch schemes or help with organising events. These can bring people together to discuss issues that affect a neighbourhood or can help new tenants to meet their neighbours.

Tenants can address issues from Recycling to activities for children at these events and support and skills are passed on to tenants to enable them to find solutions to their local issues.

St Vincent’s Housing Association actively supports the principle that everybody has a right to volunteer. We continually work to ensure that volunteering opportunities are developed across the organisation and to provide support to volunteers and equality of opportunity.

Involving volunteers in our activities brings a diversity of skills and experience to our work, assists us in meeting the needs of our clients and enriches the involvement we have with local communities. It brings and innovative and fresh perspective to our services and our volunteers are a great source of local knowledge.

There are opportunities to Volunteer in our Foyers, Urban Care Centre, Sheltered Schemes and Community projects working with our tenants and residents and in our communities.

If you would like to find out more you can:

• email Julia.glover@svha.co.uk sending your CV or detailing the area of work you are interested in
• call 0161 772 2120 to log an enquiry
• complete the our volunteer application form
• view our volunteer policy

St Vincent's residents and young people at the Manchester Foyer had the opportunity to take part in an exciting project called 'Animating Lives!'.

The Animating Lives project was a unique collaboration between young people at the Manchester Foyer and residents from the Dunstan Court retirement living scheme. The two groups mixed and mingled during a week of creative animation projects provided by Liverpool based Twinvision.

Staff introduced the residents to different animation techniques, storyline development and demonstrated how to make their own animated films about their own animated lives.

The project was a collaboration between St Vincent’s Housing Association, Twinvision Liverpool and Plus Dane Group Neighbourhood Investor Digital Inclusion Project.

You can view the final animations below or read more about the project on the blog - http://www.animatinglives.wordpress.com/