The evening services action group has a mission – to provide out of hours drop in options for people experiencing homelessness in Manchester. The group met for the first time this evening, to share a meal and discuss their experiences. Here are some of the key outcomes…

• Everyone agreed on the need for more services for people to go to in the evenings when the day centres have closed.
• The group felt that aiming for a number of options in the evening around the city would be preferable to a larger central venue.
• Each location needs to be able to offer specialist advice to help people to move off the streets and into accommodation, aswell as providing safety, warmth, food and water, toilets etc. Ideally options for laundry, internet access and phone charging would also be provided.
• The key blocker is finding suitable buildings – there are people to manage the service, and we are confident in getting enough volunteers and donations, but if anyone has connections to potential buildings please help!

The next actions for the group are…

• Organise a daytime session at Barnabus to design a survey with people experiencing homelessness, that they can take out to gather feedback from as many in the homeless community as possible on what they need. (Date TBC)
• Continue to look for possible locations – send out the proposal to more property owners, try to get this request into the M.E.N. etc.

If you have any experience in finding property, or if you have contacts that might be willing to discuss hosting an evening service, please let us know by emailing actiongroups+evening-services@streetsupport.net.

 

If you would like to help design these services by joining this action group, please let us know by registering your interest on Street Support.