Tuesday, 16 October 2012

One in Four Rough Sleepers Helped By Winter Shelters

A charity is urging local authorities to use winter shelters to cut rough sleeping after finding more than a quarter of the people who used them last year returned to the streets.  The research from umbrella group Homeless Link also found almost half of those that were helped by local authority cold weather shelters were known rough sleepers. Homeless Link surveyed every local authority in the UK and the 101 that responded told them they provided emergency cold weather support to 2308 people during winter 2011. They found that:
    *the majority of provision provided was in hostels or local B&Bs
    *34% of clients had no previous contact with services
    *At least 737 clients who were helped moved on successfully either to  other services or into accommodation, yet
    *one in four people leaving cold weather provision returned to the streets
Read more on the Homeless Link website.

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