A Royal Solution: Prince William’s Homewards for Homelessness

Prince William is set to appear in a new TV documentary series about his homelessness programme, Homewards. With his ambitious initiative, the future British king wants to end rough sleeping, sofa surfing, and other forms of temporary accommodation associated with homelessness.

Homewards is a five-year project launched by William in 2023 to bring together a range of individuals and organizations to develop bespoke homelessness solutions in Newport, South Wales, Poole, Bournemouth, Christchurch, the south London Borough of Lambeth, Belfast, Aberdeen, and Sheffield. It’s a joint effort between the public, private, and charity sectors to identify the causes of homelessness and make headway toward eradicating it in five years.

Marking the first year of his Homewards campaign to eradicate homelessness, Prince William will report its progress in building community links to make it a “rare, brief and unrepeated” experience.

The two-part series, Prince William: We Can End Homelessness, will go behind the scenes of the first year of the Homewards programme.

It will follow the Prince of Wales as he launches Homewards across the UK and will feature the journeys of those currently facing homelessness or who have lived experience of the issue. To delve into these experiences, Prince William recently invited members of the public who have had “lived experience” of homelessness to Windsor to hear more about what needs to be done to help.

The documentary will also feature well-known advocates of the programme, alongside those leading individual projects across the UK.

Jo Clinton-Davis, controller of facts at ITV, said, “With access to the inner workings of this ambitious project and the work of Prince William and his team, we hope to share with viewers a privileged insight into how they are setting out to tackle an issue which concerns us all and affects so many of our fellow citizens across the UK.”

William has long been passionate about the issue of homelessness. He is the royal patron of the charity The Passage after visiting one of their shelters with his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, when he was 11.

Matt Downie, CEO of the homeless charity Crisis, who is involved in the initiative, said, “The question isn’t what our big problems are and how we can wallow in them. The question is, who can help? We are facing some really, really tough times. Homelessness is going up, but actually, the evidence to end homelessness has never been better.”

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, who experienced homelessness as a teenager and is now chief fire officer for West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, is one of the advocates working with Homewards and praised William for his empathy.

She said: “He understands trauma, he does understand trauma. He can see echoes of it in himself, I think, from that experience of trauma and how it affects you and how it affects the way you see things.”

The TV show will air in the UK later this year.

(Source: Reuters)