Our homelessness teams: supporting people at Christmas
Our teams across all of our services are busy preparing to support people through the Christmas period.
Here, Amanda, who leads our homelessness services, tells us more about how they are helping people locally…
What does your role at Caritas involve?
I’m responsible for developing the Caritas homelessness services which includes our day centres and our supported accommodation projects. The belief that everyone deserves to live in a home where they feel safe is at the centre of everything we do.
What is Christmas like in your services?
Christmas can be a very difficult time of year for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. So, the individual support provided by our staff and volunteers is crucial in helping people to cope with practical and emotional problems and helping people to feel part of the Caritas family at Christmas really helps too. Christmas is a time when families come together and it’s the same at Caritas.
How do you support local people at this time of year?
We will continue to run all our usual support services over Christmas but also have lots of special events – festive meals, quizzes, parties and so on. That will help reduce the loneliness people feel and bring some joy into our communities.
Are you seeing more people who need support coming to your services?
We are seeing more people with greater needs this year. So many of the people we see have financial, mental and physical health problems as well as facing the prospect of being homeless at Christmas.
What do you wish people would know or what myths would you like to change about your services or the people that access them?
Homelessness can happen to anyone, but if people seek help as soon as possible then it’s possible to prevent people from becoming homeless and that’s the best way that we can reduce the number of people on the streets or living in unsupported temporary accommodation.
Why are appeals like the Advent appeal so important?
The Caritas Advent appeal will help hundreds of people facing homelessness to have some joy this Christmas but will also enable us support people out of homelessness for the long term.
What would you say to people considering supporting Caritas this Christmas?
Your donation could make the difference between someone being alone on the streets to them being welcomed into our day centres where they can get a hot meal, a warm shower, some new clothes and where they can access specialist support and be provided with safe, supported accommodation.
It’s the opportunity to help people at Christmas but also to ensure our services can continue to help prevent people from becoming homeless and to help find and provide safe, secure homes for those people who are experiencing homelessness.
How will you Bee There for others this Christmas?
I’ll be spending Christmas day working alongside our volunteers helping to serve the Christmas lunch at Cornerstone, wearing my Santa hat.
If you’ve not yet seen our Bee There Advent appeal animation – you can watch it below now, and please donate if you can.
Every penny really does help us support more local people like those our teams work alongside in Greater Manchester and Lancashire.
Thank you.
To find out more about this year’s #BeeThere appeal, take a look at this page on our website: www.caritassalford.org.uk/beethere