Commitment to Collaborate

The Commitment to Collaborate (C2C) to Prevent and Relieve Homelessness Toolkit has been developed by the WMCA Homelessness Taskforce to support organisations and partnerships across the region to think about what actions they can take to prevent and relieve homelessness.

To date, we have supported 6 organisations and partnerships to complete the C2C process using the Toolkit. These organisations and partnerships have agreed pledges and developed action plans that focus on promoting homelessness prevention across key areas of their business.

The Toolkit provides an overview of homelessness in its widest sense and has been designed to help organisations and partnerships work through the range of possible changes that they can make to prevent homelessness at the earliest opportunity.

The Toolkit sets out a step-by-step approach to identifying what the issues and gaps are for the people you work with and how you can help to tackle those issues and gaps.

You do not have to work in a specialist housing or homelessness organisation to use this Toolkit. Any organisation or business can make a contribution to preventing homelessness

C2C Finishers

As of the start of 2025 the following organisations and partnerships have successfully used the Toolkit, completing the C2C process, and have been awarded the C2C logo:

• Walsall Housing Group (whg)
• Citizen Housing
• Coventry City Council
• West Midlands Domestic Abuse Partnership
• Spring Housing
• Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid

 

How to use the C2C Toolkit

We recommend that you start by reading the section below on learning before downloading and reading the Toolkit documents as this will give you the background and information you will need to get started.

There are a range of resources for you to use including slides and facilitator notes. These are all downloadable in the resources section.

Support offer: We would welcome a conversation with you about using the Toolkit. Currently we have some capacity to work directly with your organisation or partnership. Resources permitting, we can allocate up to 2 days consultant support to help you with using the Toolkit.

If you want to explore the possibility of getting some help to use the Toolkit contact us by email at Homelessness@wmca.org.uk

“This is an excellent toolkit for supporting an organisation to think about ways to improve and focus on better ways to collaborate internally and externally, identifying key pledges that we can create actions around to prevent and relieve homelessness.”

 

Learning

Our work to support organisations and partnerships to complete the C2C process has resulted in some useful lessons learned that will help other organisations and partnerships interested in using the Toolkit to make the most of it. For example, having a senior manager or leader as the ‘project sponsor’ can make a significant difference to how easily actions and pledges can be signed off and implemented. 

We have also learnt that undertaking some collaborative pre-work on priorities can help save time and keep colleagues on track. We have recently added a new ‘Guide to C2C scoping exercises’ in the Resources section that you might find useful.

Detailed information about how best to use the Toolkit and what we have learnt through this work can be found on the Lessons Learnt page, click here for more.

Common themes and issues

For those organisations that have completed the C2C process, common themes and issues have emerged which could help you reflect on the areas that you might want to focus on. These include:

• Pre-tenancy support
• Strengthening communication across your organisation or with external partners
• Developing joined up approaches to prevention

For more information on common themes and issues, click here.

“I have really enjoyed working  through this process and it has enabled us to focus down on our key pledges in a clear and concise way that forces you to narrow down your key priorities with actions attached”

 

C2C Resources

You will need the following key resources to successfully complete the C2C process: