Two Years On: What the 2022 Cohort Taught Us About Continuity

Today we met up with a few young people who completed one of our six-week mentoring courses back in 2022. No cameras. No staged testimonials. Just a catch-up. Two years on, they’re in college, working part-time, navigating housing, and still using some of the grounding tools we co-designed together.

It reminded us why we do this!!

Back in 2022, those six week courses across the year weren’t just about mentoring, they were about emotional safety. About rituals that made transitions feel less chaotic. About building trust in placements and shelters where trust had been broken too many times.

Since then, we’ve run workshops with hundreds of young people across shelters, hostels, and supported housing. They’ve shaped everything:

• Safeguarding rituals that feel human, not clinical
• Onboarding packs with affirmations, emergency contacts, and visual cues
• Placement feedback loops that actually get used
• Youth-led design principles that now sit at the heart of our app and governance model

And here’s the quiet evidence funders rarely get to see: two years later, those young people still remember the rituals. The notes. The feeling of being seen. That’s impact. Not just in metrics, but in our memory.

We’re not just designing for safety. We’re designing for continuity. For systems that hold, even after the programme ends.

To the 2022 cohort……Thank you, so very much! You helped us build something that lasts.

The Homeless House Team