At a very rough estimate, we have probably 100-150+ homelessness workers and other staff of these agencies with an interest in using sport, arts (including music) gardening and other more physical activities as a way to engage people in some kind of participation. This may be particularly effective for those who are otherwise reluctant to explore counselling or similar more verbal ways to engage.

From the very early days of this website, we have had people registering with an arts background. Over the past 2-3 years we have had a handful - no more than a half dozen - sports psychologists registering.

Meanwhile there are some agencies that have cultivated relationships with sports clubs, and even managed to gets Sports Relief funding for such work, when more 'welfare' funding ran out. (Dame Kelly Holmes, for example, involved with one agency's funding bids.)

Plus there are many sports and especially football and boxing clubs that have a deliberate policy of reaching out to engage young people in their area, not just to recruit, to try to catch early a budding future star, but because they see it as part of being in their community.

Where to begin?

Yet as you/they will have found, apart from a general PIE framework here that we do think is flexible and adaptable, and may well apply in many environments, in the abstract, there is nothing here specifically for them.

We have had conversations with a few people about the value of the arts in expressing the whole person; and in the potential in sports psychology in striving for excellence, or just setting your own goals, 'personal best' achievement etc etc, as a radical alternative to the helping/problem-focussed mindset of clinical psychology.  And finally, we have had some people wondering if the holistic approach we have developed in PIEs actually IS useful in the world of elite sports, in looking at the environment of training and competing, as a social whole.

There is clearly something to explore in the idea that sports, the arts, and any other kinds of practical activity can reach and bring the best out of people who may be very distrustful, even despairing of the care sector and any 'welfare' services. There is dignity, respect and belonging, in sport and in music, and it can heal where 'help' cannot reach.

So in short, there is a lot of mileage to pursue; but so far, we have done very little to pursue it. There are conspicuously no examples, no links to follow, in the side panel here.

With the expansion of the PIElink team, we may hope to be able to have some forum discussions on this area, in the coming programme; but so far, this is only in the pipeline.

Still, if anyone would be interested in being part of a discussion...... just get in touch.