We opened our Hub in July 2018
It is a Hub for the homeless which currently provides a night café (19:00- 22:00) four nights per week (Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday). Over the four nights we serve meals to 160-180 service users in total
We have started one day per week, every Monday (10am -2pm) where four/five Agencies attend to give advice, assistance and Level Two support to Service Users, those threatened with homelessness and the vulnerable in the community. These have proved a great success, we are seeing around twenty to thirty service users attend these. In the first week our hairdresser gave around twenty treatments/cuts etc. to our Service Users.
The services attending so far are, Mind, DWP, Local Councillors, Sexual Health, Hairdressing. There are further multi-agencies who have said they will start attending i.e. GP/Dentist/NHS Nurses/NHS Psychosis Team/NHS Paramedics/Universal Credit/PIP/Housing Options
All service users receive breakfast and an afternoon meal
We will be developing the range of services we can offer from the Hub, a schedule for the ones that are planned next is: –
- Voice on the Street starts in December, a new initiative. This is an advocacy group giving service users a safe place where they feel enabled to express the issues they face and the output from this will be fed back to our local Council (St Helens) and Councillors so that change can be made.
- First week in December – We will deliver, two afternoons per week, as well as a drop-in centre, life skills e.g. cooking, budgeting, positive wellbeing through Art etc.
- January – We will deliver CBT and PC based counselling, anger management and confidence and assertiveness courses, plus team building, communication and listening skills domestic violence. .
- January – Every Saturday we will run a Family Day, this will be for service users who have children but are separated from them due to accommodation issues. , We will provide a safe, warm place where they can have fun we can help them to rebuild their relationships with their children, plus get a free, healthy, cooked meal. This will help build self-esteem, confidence and most importantly, enable a positive healthy relationship and be a family again.
The Hub will eventually open six days per week and be open for four evenings per week. It will also enable us to develop our role in working with St Helens Council, Merseyside Police, 5 Borough Partnership, Drug and Misuse service(CGL) and local Councillors
Thanks for taking the time to read this