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Tackling poverty and homelessness in Glasgow with The Halliday Foundation
From its early beginnings helping homeless individuals in Glasgow city centre access food and shelter to delivering employability programmes and wellbeing activities, The Halliday Foundation has become an important and integral support service for those in crisis in Scotland’s second city.
The charity’s track record in providing immediate, practical support to individuals most in need, helped the Halliday Foundation secure a two-year Greggs Foundation Community Grant.
Inspired by the charity work he’d seen his late father undertake over the years, Chris Halliday decided to set up a community group with his friends and family in 2018. The group had the simple goal of providing food for Glasgow’s homeless community.
What started out as informal volunteer work quickly became an essential service for the city’s homeless and those struggling with the effects of living in poverty. The response to the community group convinced Chris and his family to extend their work, and so The Halliday Foundation was launched in August 2019 – named in honour of Chris’s father.
Such was the demand for The Halliday Foundation’s services that in 2022, Chris gave up his job as a Plumbing Manager to become the charity’s full time Director of Operations. At the core of the Foundation’s work is a mission to meet immediate, practical needs and provide sustainable pathways out of poverty for people impacted by homelessness and deprivation.
But The Halliday Foundation team and their 70-strong army of volunteers have expanded their service offering far beyond food provision. Among the charity’s most successful projects is “House 2 Homes”, which sees the charity repair and repurpose unwanted furniture destined for landfill in order to furnish accommodation provided to homeless individuals – tackling both human and environmental concerns.
Alongside this, the charity now delivers pop-up pantries, comfort parcel distribution and community engagement sessions. It is these gatherings that are particularly important to Chris, because they reduce isolation, support mental wellbeing and present opportunities for the team to promote additional support services for those in need.
"Our entire ethos is focused on helping people in Glasgow who may be experiencing poverty and homelessness or suffering from mental health issues or substance abuse to get back on their feet, settled and in a position to find employment. We typically support people who are at their lowest point and often living chaotic lifestyles. It takes time, but we work hard to gain trust, treat people with dignity and engage with them to access services they need – whether it's through us or by signposting them to another partner organisation that can help. Our goal is to see people get the help and attention they need to turn their lives around and there is no better feeling than seeing someone lift themselves out of a crisis situation.”Chris Halliday
A success story: from sleeping rough to creating a family home
Asked what success looks like to the Foundation, Chris draws on a recent example of two individuals helped by his team. He says,
“The most rewarding thing about our work is seeing that we can make a difference. A great example of that is the story of Sophie & James. When we first met Sophie, she was sleeping rough on the streets in tents and suffering with drug addiction. Not long after she started using our support services she met James who was also getting support through one of our programmes and they both became partners.
"Sophie then became pregnant and we managed to get them support to get a home and also help to come off the drugs. Sophie and James then had their baby. We furnished their home and provided everything the family needed to start a new life.
“Fast forward three years and they are both back on their feet, and have their child full time. We still keep in touch with them both to this day.”
The power of partnerships
In delivering housing, employability, fitness and wellbeing programmes for adults and children, The Halliday Foundation works closely with a number of partner charities, including drug addiction centres and housing associations, as well as Glasgow City Council. Chris says,
“It’s really important that everyone works together to tackle the issues we’re seeing in our communities. We can achieve much more in partnership than we would do as separate organisations, as we all have the same common goal – to help those really in need.
Chris describes the work done by The Halliday Foundation as “organic and dynamic”, responding to needs in the community and focused on the most vulnerable of Glasgow’s residents.
With the help of a £40,000 Community Grant over two years from the Greggs Foundation, Chris and his team have gained security in knowing that core costs such as salaries and business overheads are covered over the coming years. He says,
"Most funders require grants to go towards specific project costs. But if you don't have funds for salaries, premises and other overheads covered, you can't deliver those projects in the first place. The type of funding we receive from the Greggs Foundation makes a big difference in terms of helping us run the charity day-to-day, evolve our services and keep meeting the needs of the community."
Asked about how he first came to work with the Greggs Foundation, Chris explains,
"Our relationship with the Greggs Foundation really started with us visiting our local Greggs shops and using their unsold food to help feed people in our community here in Glasgow – a service we still use to this day. Since then we’ve been encouraged to apply for funding through different Greggs Foundation projects and, most recently, successfully received a 2-year Community Grant.”
He continues,
“I speak to a lot of other partner organisations and charities, and I always recommend that they get in touch with the Greggs Foundation if they are looking for support from a funder that can really help them make a difference.
“It’s not just about the funding either, it’s their wraparound support and the different programmes that can help charities genuinely make a difference. In fact, a number of people we’ve supported have gone on to join Greggs through the company’s Fresh Start initiative – an employability programme that helps to upskill and find work for people who would otherwise find it hard to gain employment.”