Sutton Night Watch Homeless Charity is a day centre open Monday to Saturday supporting homeless and vulnerable people in the London Borough of Sutton and surrounding boroughs. Our aim is to improve health, wellbeing and life skills for our service users and to help them engage within the community to break the cycle of homelessness and dependency. Currently we have 3 peer mentors and our own counselling service on site that is completely free for people struggling to access services through the NHS. Each Peer mentors works with an individual on a one-to-one basis covering the first 3 steps of recovery in depth. We encourage everyone to go to a fellowship of their choice. Service users are shown the 12 steps and how they work. They are encouraged to get a sponsor and start engaging in meetings. Their peer mentor is someone who is in recovery and through a 12 step programme has turned their life around. They are shown a new way of life without any mind-altering substances. Anyone can turn their life around with the right support on offer. There is no judgment made here they can choose their own fellowship. We also have many life skills courses, including cooking healthy meals on a budget, employment services, budgeting skills, motivational interviewing. Kinsugi Hope. We offer food, clothing supplies, online access to job and health services, showers, washing facilities, projects for people that need help with addiction and life skills and a full-time kitchen. We want to be recognised as a central point from which recovery from homelessness can begin. We would like to become a consolidated hub for signposting people to the right services which will hugely increase their impact on the local community.
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0Sutton Night Watch was founded in 2015. We originally set up as a soup kitchen to support our homeless community at the back of Sutton Station. In 2017 we became a registered charity and moved into the Secombe Centre on a part time basis only. In November 2019 we managed to secure our very own premises based in Manor Road, Wallington and secured a tenancy for 10 years.
Within a month of opening our fulltime centre we hit a global pandemic, which was Covid 19. We had to think fast to protect our volunteers and clients, however the management team worked together and kept our premises open through the whole pandemic. Food pickups continued, we delivered to all our vulnerable clients. Hot nourishing food was made on the premises and given out to those at the door. When we could we allowed people into the back garden as it is an open space for safety. We worked with Sutton Council to secure people into accommodation. It was difficult as most of the team at the council were working from home. We organised vaccines for all our volunteers and clients if this was needed. I am proud to say we are one of very few charities that kept our doors opened to help our community during the whole pandemic.
We provide a vital service by supporting Sutton and the surrounding boroughs homeless and vulnerable people. We offer food, clothing supplies, online access to job and health services, showers, washing facilities, projects for people that need help with addiction and life skills and a full-time kitchen. We want to be recognised as a central point from which recovery from homelessness can begin. We would like to become a consolidated hub for signposting people to the right services which will hugely increase their impact on the local community.
To continue to create a hub like community to enable our clients to access services that they desperately need.
- We are currently in the process of working with Sutton Mental Health Foundation to secure funding for more counselling services within our borough. Unfortunately, the average waiting list for these services can run as long as 12 months. We want to reduce this by adding counsellors in both SMHF and SNW.
- To develop our Positive Steps and Empowering Lives Project to create a lasting impact in our clients’ lives.
- To expand our SNW Outlet business.
- To develop more classes to support our projects.
- To secure salaries for both our counsellors and peer mentors.
- To work with medical professionals to make sure all homeless can access help by having our own drop-in service.
- To try and secure more sponsorship.
Long term Goals:
- To open a new centre in another borough.
- Having a full-time centre opening 7 days per week.
