William meets international delegation as part of campaign to end homelessness

The Prince of Wales has joined an international delegation which has arrived in Bournemouth to learn from his charity aimed at preventing youth homelessness.

In 2023 William launched his Homewards project, which aims to develop a blueprint for eradicating homelessness in all its forms, “making it rare, brief and unrepeated”.

Six Homewards locations were chosen – Newport, Lambeth, Belfast, Aberdeen, Sheffield and the three neighbouring Dorset towns of Poole, Bournemouth and Christchurch (BCP) – with the aim of delivering bespoke solutions to the homelessness issues in each area.

The campaign is a major long-term focus for the prince, who has told how visiting shelters with his late mother Diana, Princess of Wales when he was a child left a deep and lasting impression and inspired his work.

Representatives from Australia, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Finland have travelled to the UK to visit the BCP operation, which is seen as a flagship of the charity’s centres.

William met the delegates, who included representatives from the third sector, education and local government, at Bournemouth Pier where they met leaders of the local services.

They then joined a session of the newly formed BCP Youth Homelessness Board to learn how different sectors are working together to prevent young people reaching crisis points.

And they will look at how these can be scaled across the UK and to the delegates’ home countries.

Melanie Redman, president of A Way Home Canada, said: “We are here to learn about the success of other models and systems that are happening here in Bournemouth.

“For it’s fantastic to see the prince throw his support behind something so important because young people deserve better outcomes, they deserve to thrive, and to see the Royal Foundation so involved in this and at such a personal level is truly exciting and will hopefully ignite more efforts in Canada.”

Frances Beecher, chairwoman of the BCP Council’s Youth Homelessness Board, said after meeting William: “He is totally engaged.

“I think homelessness is very important to him and dear to his heart.

“What is really clear is he wants to do whatever he can to ensure the issue is centralised in all the different areas and people come together to solve youth homelessness.

“What the support means for Homewards is it gives us a way to bring all the different partners to the table and a way of creating systemic change, it’s about a system where young people do not fall through the gaps.”

Theo, a young member of Homewards’ National Co-Production Group who has used their own experience to help the charity focus its work, also met the prince and said: “He is very engaged, he was very keen to hear how the project is going and saying how fundamental and key lived experience is and how he can’t do the project by himself and how he needs all of our support and to work together.

“It was amazing, he was very easy to talk to and welcoming.”

As William left the pier, a large crowd had gathered to wave him off and the prince stopped briefly to take a selfie with a family of well-wishers.