Furnishing Futures is an innovative new charity founded by former social worker and interior designer, stylist and writer Emily Wheeler. We combine social work values with interior design skills to create trauma-informed, fully furnished healing homes for women and children escaping domestic abuse who are placed in empty social housing or living with furniture poverty, and who have experienced multiple disadvantages and trauma.

Emily founded Furnishing Futures in response to the poverty she saw in her frontline social work, particularly after supporting women to leave abusive situations only to be rehoused in cold, empty flats without even a bed to sleep on or oven to cook a meal for their children, which led to some of the women returning to perpetrators.

Emily realised that there was often nowhere for families or professionals to turn to for furniture, compounding women’s distress and contributing to professionals’ concerns for their children’s welfare and safety. At the same time, waste is a huge issue in the interiors industry, with many companies and individuals looking for ways to improve sustainability and reuse items that are often new and unused.

Emily knew that survivors needed a complete healing home, where they felt safe and supported, and Furnishing Futures was started at Emily’s kitchen table in 2019. We became a registered charity in 2021 and have developed partnerships with leading specialist domestic abuse services and grassroots organisations, as well as some of the UK’s best known interiors brands, stylists and designers who donate products for the homes we create.

We are a small charity with big ambitions, and our goal is to develop a model that can be scaled across the UK and further afield to support more families, more effectively.

Furnishing Futures is a registered charity whose headquarters are in Leyton, East London.