THE Prince of Wales is visiting Dorset, joining international delegates from five countries to showcase his charity initiative aimed at preventing homelessness.
The Prince arrived at Bournemouth Pier as part of his Homewards programme, launched in 2023.
The initiative seeks to create a blueprint to end homelessness in all its forms by making it “rare, brief and unrepeated”.
During the visit, delegates took part in a session alongside the Prince and members of the newly formed BCP Youth Homelessness Board.
The board brings together partners from public, private, voluntary and community sectors to strengthen support for young people facing homelessness.
Melanie Redman, president of A Way Home Canada, said: “We’ve been working for the last 10 years to build evidence in Canada that prevention gets better outcomes for young people and their families. We are now armed with evidence that prevention works.
“We are here to learn about taking things to scale, because that’s really hard to do. A lot of the work that the Homewards programme is doing is looking at how we can ignite local governance and local action to scale evidence-based models in a way that will have real impact.”
The Prince also met Theo, a young member of Homewards’ National Co-Production Group, who has used his own experiences to help shape the charity’s work.
Theo said: “He was very engaged and keen to hear how the project is going."
“It was amazing. He was very easy to talk to and welcoming.”
Resident Jan Gilbert attended with her grandchildren and was delighted to meet the Prince, even capturing a photo with him. Her grandchildren also gave him flowers.
She said: “We went to the Coronation, we have seen Princess Anne and I’m a royalist and I just like seeing them."
Councillor, Kieran Wilson, who has been involved in developing local action plans to tackle homelessness, said that over the past three years, significant work has been carried out, which he described as a very important issue.
He described his conversation with the Prince as “lovely”.
He said: “You can see that he really cares about this issue, which is really important.
"We want everyone to have a safe place that they're going to call home. no young person should be without a home. Today’s visit highlights the commitment across BCP to preventing homelessness before it happens.
“Over the last year, we’ve seen a doubling in the prevention of young people going into homelessness. That’s really positive and shows things are moving in the right direction.
He added: “A lot of this is system-change work, so you won’t necessarily see results straight away. But we’re patient, persistent, and hopeful that in the long term it will have a real impact.”
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