Outreach

The Outreach Team provides individuals with an excellent service, enabling people to leave the street and take their first steps towards a lasting, genuine independence.

The outreach team visits rough sleepers at their sleeping sites during their early morning outreach shift. The team makes contact and builds relationships with rough sleepers through face to face meetings and through our Rough Sleeper Helpline (020 8404 1481). This receives calls from homeless people, members of the public who are concerned about rough sleepers, and from other agencies working with our clients.

The team carry out assessments of need and begin to address issues such as physical and mental health, substance use and finances. We also work with people who are homeless but not rough sleeping – for instance those who are ‘sofa surfing’ or staying on a friend’s floor.

The biggest challenge for the team is to find accommodation for the huge numbers of homeless people who approach the service. 

With only 14 beds for single homeless people in the whole Borough this represents a significant challenge and the team continue to buck the trend – resettling over 70 rough sleepers in 09/10 and 38 in 10/11.