From dwelling tough at 15 to turning into a homelessness advisor to royalty

A woman who rose from sleeping rough as a schoolgirl to becoming a top firefighter  is now Prince William‘s homelessness adviser. 

Sabrina Cohen-Hatton was just 15 and studying for her GCSEs when she took to living on the streets of Wales, following a heartbreaking childhood in which her father died when she was nine. 

Struggling ‘terribly’ with mental health and her mother ‘unable to cope’ with her family’s ‘abject poverty’, Sabrina turned to selling the Big Issue at the age of 17 to scrape a living.

For her, it was the turning point that ‘saved her life’ and led her into a career in the fire service, where she flourished becoming Britain’s youngest female fire chief.

And now she has become the Prince of Wales’s ambassador as part of his Homewards project – and was able to share her story with the royal at Windsor Castle as proof that homeless people should not be ‘written off’. 

‘I sit in front of you now with a job, a home, a family and a PhD,’ mother-of-one Sabrina said. 

Her story comes as Prince William marks the one-year anniversary of his £3million Homewards scheme to end the scourge of rough and itinerant sleeping, ‘sofa surfing’ and substandard temporary family accommodation in six key locations around the country.

The future king is today expected to give a speech in which he will say he is more convinced than ever that homelessness can be eradicated for good.  

Homelessness is a complex society issue, and one that touches the lives of far too many people in our society. However, I truly believe that it can be ended.’

The heir to the throne launched his most ambitious public project to date last year, inspired by the legacy of his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, who began taking him to shelters as a young child.

Homelessness has soared in recent years with 100,000 families in temporary accommodation – affecting 144,000 children – and almost 4,000 people sleeping rough every night.

But those looking to tackle it believe it can be combatted with a joined-up approach that stops people and families falling through the net in the first place.

Homewards is a five-year project based around six areas around the UK.

That includes Newport in South Wales – where a 15-year-old Sabrina used to sleep rough after the death of a parent and problems at home.

Describing her trauma living on the street, Sabrina wrote in the Big Issue: ‘My father died when I was nine and I was in a single-parent household with a mum who found it incredibly difficult to cope and struggled terribly with her mental health.

‘We lived in abject poverty for several years as a result. When somebody goes to war with their demons, everyone around them gets hit by the shrapnel.

‘We were in a really volatile situation by the time I was 15, a crisis point where it was just too much. My mum loved me dearly but she didn’t have the capacity to be able to look after me properly. It was then that I started to sleep rough.’

Sabrina was in the middle of her GCSEs when she took the decision to live on the streets. 

She would stash her books in a box in a derelict building after studying on the street – as she was fearful that asking for a school locker would ‘alert social services’ and plunge her family deeper into crisis. 

‘Eventually all my books were ripped up in that building by a proper neo-Nazi skinhead – he saw my surname Cohen on my grammar book and he attacked me,’ she added.

‘He put out a cigarette out on my arm. He really went to town on me. It was a horrible experience. After that I kept my books in a box in the Big Issue office. And I kept studying. I think I saw qualifications as a ticket out of there.’

She credited the Big Issue with ‘saving her life’, as it led to her finding secure accommodation and then joining the fire service. 

She became West Sussex’s fire chief in 2019, aged 36, and was one of just six female in the UK to hold the title – as well as being the youngest.

She has spoken widely about her own journey, including this latest role as an advocate for Homewards.

Sabrina added Prince William showed a lot of ’empathy’ towards the issue of homelessness, which she felt reflected the ‘trauma’ of his early life, which saw his mother Princess Diana lose her life in a car crash in Paris when he was just 15. 

Ms Cohen-Hatton, 41, now also has a 14-year-old daughter, a doctorate and honorary fellowship at Cardiff University in behavioural neuroscience. 

She says it was difficult for her to access help and she was forced to live with constant threats and violence on the streets, albeit with the help of her devoted dog, Menace. 

‘When you don’t have enough to eat, let alone to think, it is hard to reach out and take those services, ‘ she said.

‘When you have someone who loves you very deeply but doesn’t have the physical or mental resources to look after you, you are raised to treat any kind of authority figure with mistrust. You are desperately trying to hold it together.

‘I carried the stigma with me every day.’

Over the last 12 months William has brought together local coalitions in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Christchurch & Poole, Lambeth, Newport, Northern Ireland and Sheffield. 

Private landlords and local authorities, builders, charities and churches, as well as leading firms such as Homebase are working together for the first time.

Already a pipeline of almost 100 homes for those currently, or about to experience, homelessness has been delivered, as well as a £1million donation of home starter packs and 500 jobs with Pret A Manger.

Each location is now looking to unlock homes at scale.