Taking place from June 7-11, Impact Forum 2021 is a week-long series of live, online events, exploring what resilience means to individuals and organisations working in homelessness and related fields, and how we can build it into our systems to support an evidence-led end to homelessness.

CHI said: “Ending homelessness requires unified action on an unprecedented scale. To do it, the field will need to call upon its collective resilience to face down many urgent challenges. As we start to emerge from a global pandemic that affected every aspect of daily life and erased any sense of normality, this year’s convening will explore innovative and evidence-led solutions that aim to build a better future for all — creating opportunities to become more resilient and closer with each other along the way. 

“Resilience represents different things to different people, but for all of us who have lived through the pandemic, it will be an essential quality to deal with years of future uncertainty and to ensure we create better systems than the ones we had before. But how can we ensure that resilience is built into the systems we’re currently trying to change? 

“Over five days, we will look to individuals and organisations working in homelessness and related fields and draw upon a wealth of lived experiences to explore the theme of resilience and how evidence and data might help us to harness it to end homelessness for good.”

Tickets for all five days of events are now available.

Dr Ligia Teixeira, CEO of the Centre for Homelessness Impact, said: “For all of us who have lived through the pandemic, resilience will be an essential quality as we navigate a landscape in which so much has changed so profoundly. 

“We want to explore what resilience means to people from very different walks of life and to understand how we can design better systems that are person-centred and informed by the best available evidence and have resilience at their core. We also want to explore how evidence-led work to end homelessness can work with the grain of the UK Government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda.

“Our Impact Forum brings together experts from around the world to consider evidence and data on homelessnesss and how it can be deployed. We will hear throughout from people who have or are themselves experiencing homelessness. We are delighted to have assembled many brilliant speakers and a programme that will inform, challenge, move and inspire people working to end homelessness and in many other fields.” 

Speakers Include:

• Sir Michael Barber, former head of Downing Street’s Delivery Unit from 2001-05 who is leading a cross-government review of delivery of projects and programmes
• Anne Longfield, Children’s Commissioner for England from 2015-21 and former chief executive of the charity 4Children
• Sir Richard Evans, an historian of modern Germany and author of 20 books including The Pursuit of Power: Europe 1815-1915 
• Julia Unwin DBE, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation from 2007-16 and Chair of the Independent Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society from 2017-19
• Eddie Hughes MP, the UK Government’s Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing and MP for Walsall North
• Julie James AM, Minister for Climate Change (including Housing and Homelessness) in the Welsh Government and AM for Swansea West
• Deirdrie Hargey MLA, Minister for Communities within the Northern Ireland Executive and MLA for South Belfast

The 2021 Impact Forum is designed for learning, connection, and taking action for anyone dedicated to ending homelessness for good.

Registration is open here.