Off The Streets

Aim

No one should be cold, hungry, homeless and alone. We aim to get rough sleepers off the streets once and for all.

Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.

Off the Streets is a grassroots charity which was started by a few local people seeing a need in their community to help and support some of it’s most vulnerable members. The charity provides emergency & transitional housing for homeless people. It assists rough sleepers, as they move from chaotic, often abusive lives into independent, self-sufficient lifestyles.  Off The Streets also supports people in finding & moving into permanent accommodation and provides after support to help them maintain their tenancies.

We are all volunteers so every penny raised through this crowdfunding appeal will go towards goods & services for the homeless people we support.

As part of our Outreach work, we provide rough sleepers with food, drink, clothing, toiletries and mobile top-ups. This is also the case in relation to support we offer to other homeless people, people who were homeless but now have permanent accommodation, children & families in family hostels and people in the refugee hostel. 

 The vast majority of the people we support are on benefits, are entitled to benefits but have not applied or have no access to public funds. Without exception, these same people will have a range of personal difficulties which include: poor physical health, mental health problems, experience of violence, abuse or neglect, drug and alcohol addiction, bereavement, relationship breakdown, experience of the care system, served a prison term or are refugees. 

 Through a combination of financial difficulties, personal problems and the insecure nature of their lifestyles, they often go without adequate food, clothing, warmth or a place to sleep. Homeless people are at risk generally in the course of their daily lives but they are especially vulnerable during these worrying times. As with all of us, people without a home have a basic human right to food, shelter, safety & dignity but they are often quite literally left out in the cold. 

Our main type of support is to ensure homeless people do not go hungry; have clean, warm clothing & bedding; have sufficient toiletries to attend to personal hygiene and are provided with the wherewithal to maintain contact with others (mobile top-ups) as a means of staving off loneliness. 

Ultimately, the goal is to help people move away from homelessness altogether. In order to achieve this, we are planning to extend our life skills training with particular emphasis on budget management. This training will be reinforced through mentoring and during home visits so ensure people have adequate food, clothing & toiletries, pay their bills regularly and are able overall to maintain their tenancies.

Initial outlay will be in adapting a space into a training room within our new shelter including computers & software. We then need to commission appropriate training for our staff and service users until this function can be taken on in-house. There are also costs linked to supporting rough sleepers in applying for jobs, being well prepared presentationally and in attending DWP and job interviews.

Each week, Off The Streets offers direct support to between 55 & 60 people. This includes rough sleepers, people ‘sofa surfing’, families in hostels, ex-offenders in hostels and refugees. 

This project successfully funded on 13th May 2022