Prince William’s homelessness adviser, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, appeared on This Morning to discuss a new documentary about the royal’s Homewards programme
Prince William’s homelessness adviser, Sabrina Cohen-Hatton, has opened up on ITV’s This Morning about her inspiring journey from living on the streets to advising royalty.
Homeless at just 15 and surviving by selling The Big Issue on the streets of Newport, Sabrina powered through adversity to achieve a PhD, become a fire service chief, and lend her expertise to Prince William’s noble crusade against homelessness.
She reminisced on her work with the Prince ahead of an impactful new documentary focusing on the royal’s Homewards project aimed at eradicating homelessness within five years. The 41-year-old praised the Prince, saying: “He’s amazing and I’m one of several advocates, we’ve all got our own experience of homelessness or we’ve been touched by homelessness in some way. One of the things he was really keen on was making sure that he’s listening to people who have been there so we can try and do things that are really practical.”
She continued, highlighting the Prince’s empathetic approach: “Every time I’ve met the Prince, he has been so focused on the human impact of homelessness and I think it’s really easy when you’re trying to do a programme as big as this and a challenge as big as ending homelessness to just focus on the strategy and forget about the people. But he’s so focused on the trauma and the complexity and the impact on individuals and that for me has been a real privilege to be able to see that in action,” reports the Mirror.
It comes as the Prince of Wales has recalled playing chess and chatting with people during his first visit to The Passage homelessness charity with his mother, more than 30 years ago, in a new documentary.
William admitted he was “a bit anxious as to what to expect” before his first visit, and remembered his mother – Diana, Princess of Wales – “making everyone feel relaxed and having a laugh and joking with everyone”.
He told the ITV1 and ITVX documentary – Prince William: We Can End Homelessness: “My mother took me to The Passage. She took Harry and I both there. I must have been about 11, I think probably at the time, maybe 10. I’d never been to anything like that before, and I was a bit anxious as to what to expect.
“My mother went about her usual part of making everyone feel relaxed and having a laugh and joking with everyone. I remember at the time kind of thinking, ‘well, if everyone’s not got a home, they’re all going to be really sad’. But it was incredible how happy an environment it was.
“I remember having some good conversations just playing chess and chatting. That’s when it dawned on me that there are other people out there who don’t have the same life as you do. When you’re quite small, you don’t really, you just think life is what you see in front of you and you don’t really have the concept to look elsewhere and it’s when you meet people, I did then, who put a different perspective in your head and say like, well, ‘I was a living on the street last night’, and you’re like ‘woah’, you know.”
The prince was followed for the programme during the first year of his Homewards initiative. The campaign is a major long-term focus for William, who has told how visiting shelters with his late mother when he was a child left a deep and lasting impression and inspired his work.
Homewards aims to develop a blueprint for eradicating homelessness in all its forms, “making it rare, brief and unrepeated”. The documentary will be broadcast on October 30 and 31 at 9pm on ITV1 and ITVX, STV and STV Player.
