Home Again offers housing with bespoke supports leading to substantive community integration gains for people with psychosocial disabilities at a fraction of what it costs to institutionalise long-term

Home Again

Home Again offers permanent housing with bespoke supports for service users with long term needs. People come together to form affinity groups and live in homes in a community, creating a shared space of comfort, that mimics a familial environment. Along with housing, support services are offered for health, household management, socialisation, economic transactions, work, leisure and pursuits with personal meaning. Such support services are focused on helping people achieve their own sense of well-being, rather than normalising towards a mandated archetype of recovery. Diverse lived experiences pepper the landscape of homes supported under the programme – home purchases are self-directed, social roles are assumed and enacted, pups in need of care are adopted into these families of choice, public transports are navigated, and children visit for afterschool lessons or for time with grandmothers.

Partnerships and Replications

We support the peer-led implementation of Home Again in Trichy by Amali and Jacqueline, two sisters who have personally experienced homelessness and mental illness. As anchors of this programme in Trichy, they are lending an intimate and in-depth perspective shaped by their own experiences and dynamically contributing to enhancing the intervention across sites.
The Government of Kerala and The Banyan partner to offer Home Again to people living for over a year or more with no exit options across the three state psychiatric facilities in Kozhikode, Thrissur and Thiruvananthapuram. We implement Home Again for people institutionalised long-term at Regional Mental Hospital, Ratnagiri, through an MOU with the Government of Maharashtra.

Impact

200
people with histories of homelessness and mental health issues live across 40 homes in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra
90 %
experience meaningful gains in community integration
60%
demonstrate decrease in disability

Story of P

Some years back, my family called me back to live with them. I rejected that and chose to live alone (rented a house in Kovalam and worked to meet my expenses). Living alone has been contagiously comforting. I can transact and not transact as per my emotional needs and preferences. However, the Wardha floods damaged the house along with all my belongings, post which I decided to return to living with The Banyan. Shared homes have been an extension of the life I was getting used to, I get to live life on my own terms, with support being available when required as per my direction.

Locations

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