11.12.2025
The SOLACE-CEE Partnership was launched in October 2024. It has been a whole year since Housing First Poland Foundation HFPF started its operations within this international partnership. This is what we achieved in this period.
All SOLACE-CEE Partners aim to address the needs of people with the experience of chronic homelessness and mental health crises. Partners from Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania focus on creating Hubs that provide integrated social and health services in the area of physical health: general practitioner, nurses, specialists, for people excluded from the general system due to homelessness and/or stereotypes.
In the environment in which we operate – Warsaw – this is not necessary, due to easier access to public health services and well-developed streetworking and medical streetworking for in Warsaw.
The aim of HFPF Hub is to complement available services with long-term support provided in line with the values of Housing First – as long as participants report such a need. We focus on mental health services. The people we support are housed as they already received housing assistance of the Municipality of Warsaw. Compared to the Hubs of other SOLACE-CEE Partners, we have few participants to whom we provide intensive and long-term assistance (up to 2 years).
The Hub was launched immediately after the inauguration of the Partnership in October 2024. It was based on the human resources of the Ambivalence Program, which HFPF has been running since 2021. The program has recently been identified as an inspiring practice by the European Platform of Ending Homelessness EPOCH.
The team of two employees working with 5-7 participants was enlarged to four-person team of psychologists working with up to 15 Participants.
In accordance with the goal of the SOLACE-CEE Partnership, which is to test the Integrated Health and Social Care Model, by expanding the team, we took care of the high qualifications of new specialists in the field of mental health, in particular: psychological and therapeutic background.
Currently, the qualifications of the team members include crisis intervention, streetworking, psychology, clinical psychology, solution-focused therapy, motivational dialogue, art therapy (periodically), social work, psychotherapy and, of course, Housing First Values.
The team met regularly once a week (40 meetings x 4.5h), most of the meetings took place live (eye to eye). From April 2025, the team underwent regular group supervision provided by an external specialist (Psychotherapist, Supervisor for Domestic Violence) (6 sessions once a month).
In October 2024, the Team began to qualify and engage new participants in cooperation with local institutions. Information about the Hub was provided to the Commission for Social Dialogue in Homelessness od the Municipality of Warsaw, the Warsaw Integration Center "Integrated Warsaw" of the Municipality of Warsaw, which manages local Housing First Based Program and selected social welfare centers in Warsaw. Information about the program appeared on social media and on the Housing First Portal www.najpierwmieszkanie.org.pl.
In result 14 applications were submitted and proposal to engage in the program was passed to all applicants. The decision to engage was made by 9 people (2 women and 7 men) who as a result have built long-term relationships with team members, which are continued and developed. 5 people have not decided to engage in long term support. They received short-term support.
Support provided by the HFPF Team of Specialists included:
Additional services for participants:
Part of the support was provided in kind, thanks to the involvement of private and institutional donors, in particular the Brda Foundation.
Our capacity building is concentrated on building in-depth competence among service workers who support people with the experience of chronic homelessness and mental health crises to deliver services in accordance to Housing First Values. Rather then provide short term theoretical trainings we provide long term on-going consultations for teams that want to develop towards Housing First Values. To deliver the highest quality consultations HFPF representatives participate in international knowledge based and networking events, especially for stakeholders who share HF Values.
The FNMP representatives participated in gatherings, conferences and individual meetings including the Social Dialogue Commission for Homelessness of the Municipality of Warsaw (8 meetings of 15 to 20 representatives of local homelessness ngos), the Commission of Experts on Homelessness Prevention of the National Commissioner for Human Rights (2 meetings), consultation meetings on the reform of the Social Assistance Act organized by the Ministry of Family, Labour and Social Policy (5 meetings), Parliamentary Commissions including Parliamentary Commission on Homelessness (2 meetings), the Commission on Social Policy and Family, the Commission on Children and Youth and conferences of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister m.in the presentation of the OECD report on the housing situation in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The FNMP representative participated in the "New Horizons in Housing First" conference organized by the Housing First Europe HUB in Dublin, Ireland (December 2024), presenting the SOLACE-CEE project during networking, participating in sessions on better integration of health and social services for people experiencing long-term homelessness.
The FNMP representative also participated in the seminar of the "Adapting Housing First" Project in Cork, Ireland (March 2025), coordinated by the Irish organization Sophia Housing, with the participation of Y-Säätiö from Finland. The SOLACE-CEE partnership was presented during the networking between sessions and during the discussions after the presentations. In result the invitation to the SOLACE-CEE Advisory Board by a representative of the Y-Säätiö Foundation was accepted by the Coordinator of the Research Cluster of the Housing First Europe HUB.
The most experienced employees of the HFPF – an Expert and trainer on HF and a Psychologist/Head of the Specialist Team provided regular in-depth consultations for external teams:
The Project Coordinator from HFPF participated in meetings of the Steering Committee, the Project Management Group, the Financial Team, and together with the team members in the Innovation Team (online and in person), presenting the Housing First Values (Budapest, December 2025). The team actively consulted written draft materials developed by other SOLACE-CEE partners.
We also participated in two Partnership Consortium Meetings combined with sites visits to Košice (October 2024) and Sofia (June 2025).
The total budget of the FNMP in the SOLACE-CEE Partnership is EUR 311.304,00 and includes:
Budget categories and the level of spending after one year of project implementation:
We received funds from the first tranche of the grant in the amount of EUR 84052 in November 2024.
After receiving information about the positive decision of European Commission on funding SOLACE-CEE Partnership, we started efferts to to obtain the required contribution of HFPF (“own input”).
In October 2024, we submitted two grant proposals to the Marshal's Office of the Mazovia Voivodeship to the Fund for Own Inputs (Fundusz Wkładów Własnych) in order to obtain financing for the own contribution for 2024. The offer was rejected twice for formal reasons. We did not present the full translation of the SOLACE-CEE Grant Agreement. We filed a complaint against this decision, arguing that the Grant Agreement was 263 pages long, English is the official language of the European Union and the language of communication in the Partnership, and its translation would take a lot of time. We asked for a change in the regulations. Our claim was rejected. In result, HFPF financed own contribution from the funds of our donors in 2024.
In November 2024, we appealed to the National Institute of Freedom of the Government of Poland to consider the change in the PROO 1b Competition for Co-financing Own Contribution to an International Project to change the regulations so that Grant Agreements for international projects would be accepted in English. The relevant change was introduced in 2024, but after the closing of the possibility of submitting bids for 2024. We submitted the proposal in February 2025 (PROO 1b Competition), in June the proposal received a positive formal assessment, and in September a final positive assessment.
As a result, we have obtained full financing of our own contribution to the SOLACE-CEE Partnership from January 1, 2025 to September 30, 2027 from the National Freedom Institute – Civil Society Development Program.
The main financial challenge we faced during the reporting period was the negative financial balance caused by the currency exchange from and to EURO and PLN. The vast majority of our expenses are incurred in PLN, which requires the conversion of SOLACE-CEE funds from PLN to EURO. The standard exchange selling rate of banks is, by definition, lower than the average exchange rate that we are obliged to use when calculating the level of expenditure reported to European Commission. The discrepancy between the selling rate and the average rate resulted in a loss of more than 3,500 EURO. According to the Grant Agreement, this cost is not qualified even as an indirect cost. As a result, HFPF has to obtain this amount from private donors.
The problem was solved for the future thanks to cooperation with BNP Paribas Bank, which established a special selling rate for the FNMP to reduce losses to a minimum.
