Bristol Homeless Forum
Introduction

Background

Started in September 2001, the BCAN Homeless Forum provides support, encouragement and resources to a wide range of groups working with homeless people in and around Bristol.

Homelessness is one of a complex set of inter-related problems.  Those who are, or who have been, homeless often also suffer from addiction, unemployment, physical and mental health issues; they often suffer from a history of abuse and family breakup and engage in criminal behaviour.

Most of the professionals are only able to address one part of this complex mixture, and while in theory they are supposed to work together, in practice this rarely happens.

So it is often the 'amateurs' - the smaller charities and voluntary groups - who work with these people in a holistic way.  For many of these groups, the BCAN Homeless Forum is the only real support they receive.

Public Launch

The BCAN Homeless Forum organised a public launch on 15 April 2005 to promote its work. Please see the Public Launch page for more details.

Training

One practical way we support each other is by sharing the training we all need.  The training sessions are usually on the second Saturday morning of each month.

The training is open to anyone who would benefit, and does not require any previous knowledge or experience.

Meetings

The BCAN Homeless Forum meets every two months, on the Thursday following the training, between 7:30 and 9:30 pm. Up to the end of 2003, most of the meetings were held at City Road Baptist Church, but since then we have been moving around. Please see the Homeless Forum Diary pages for more details.

Notes of the previous meetings can be found on the Meetings page; the documents that are made available at the meetings can be found on the Documents page.

Email List

The BCAN Homeless Forum maintains a mailing list. The purpose of this mailing list is to enable BHF members to distribute news relevant to our activities.

The software being used to maintain this mailing list is 'majordomo'. At present, the BCAN web site host does not provide majordomo, so the CCM General Manager is 'hosting' the mailing list. This is why subscribe and unsubscribe requests are sent to "majordomo@hazelden.org.uk" and not (for example) "majordomo@bcan.org.uk".

If you wish to add yourself to the list, please send an email to "majordomo@hazelden.org.uk" and put "subscribe bhf" as the message BODY. The message SUBJECT will be ignored. Your email should be sent in Plain Text format only. If your email application sends messages in HTML format by default, you should change the setting to Plain Text.

You can remove yourself from the list in the same way: simply send a plain text email to "majordomo@hazelden.org.uk" and put "unsubscribe bhf" as the message BODY. The message SUBJECT will again be ignored.

For further information about the BCAN Homeless Forum, please email Paul Hazelden .