My name is Maria, and for the past eight years, I have been Praxis’ Head of Services and Business Development.  

In my previous life before Praxis, I did several courses in Psychology, and I worked for 17 years in a series of roles in mental health and homelessness with St Mungo’s. Witnessing the experience of my friend and his family fleeing war in Syria made me want to work with migrants and refugees, who I knew were increasingly facing homelessness within a hardening anti-migrant agenda. 

Praxis was one of the only organisations joining the dots between homelessness and migration, and I wanted to be part of the change that brought the two sectors together in the face of a crisis seeing thousands of migrants and refugees becoming homeless every year.  

At the time I didn’t know much about migration policies. I did know about housing though, and that was what Praxis needed: we had just started to run our own housing project for migrant families, and Praxis needed someone to run and develop it. That was the beginning of my journey at Praxis.  

As soon as I joined Praxis, I started working to establish new partnerships with homelessness organisations and Local Authorities so we could reach migrants facing the most vulnerable circumstances: homelessness, exploitation, abuse. Through legal advice and casework – as well as housing and support - we would help them obtain the vital documents they needed to access the mainstream services they needed to get back on their feet.  

I built and strengthened relationships with homelessness charities and Local Authorities across London, and, using evidence from our casework and the success of our housing project, proved beyond doubt that while punitive migration policies and a Kafkaesque system push or keep people into homelessness, legal advice and casework is the key out of it.   

It was a no brainer. My job was to convince as many local authorities and service providers as possible, of the need to work in collaboration and provide legal advice and casework to really help people out of homelessness.  

This was an exciting, yet arduous journey. Not many outside the migration world were ready to tackle this issue head on. It took a lot of convincing to get others to see that access to immigration advice was key to a way out of homelessness. It took yet more persuasion to get them to invest in these services.  

Yet with time, Praxis was able to bring more and more people on board and shift the narrative and understanding around migrant homelessness.  

We worked with St Mungo’s, Shelter, Crisis, CGL, Connections, St Martin in the Fields and Pathways to reach the people they supported. To offer the immigration advice and casework they needed so they could access mainstream housing, employment and vital support. We worked with local authorities across London, who commissioned us to help their rapidly growing migrant homeless population. We worked with the Greater London Authority to shape a new way to support migrants in needs across London.  

We worked very hard to drive a cultural change across the sector. Not long-ago homelessness charities’ main ‘solution to homelessness’ was centred around supporting people to go back to their home countries. We showed the sector that a better way was possible. We worked with them to implement the internal changes necessary to expand provision of services to migrant communities here in the UK.   

All this work happened against the backdrop of hardening migration policies, Brexit and a global pandemic! During my time at Praxis external factors have made life increasingly difficult for migrants in the UK. Yet at Praxis we did everything we could to change the way the charity sector and public institutions respond to growing needs among migrant communities.  

In the 8 years I have worked here our advice team has gone from 7 members to 22+. Today, most of our advisers work on projects run in partnership with homelessness charities and local authorities. This shows how much the sector has changed and responded to Praxis’ lead.