Winter Shelters

Give Me Shelter – the role of London’s Winter Shelters for the homeless 2004/05

September 2005

Broadway, on behalf of the London Housing Foundation, conducted research in 2005 looking at the role that winter shelters have to play in providing homelessness services.

Broadway recognised key areas that required attention in order to improve the level of service in the sector:

A need for services

The number of people using the shelters and feedback on why they access these projects demonstrates a clear need for services which the homelessness sector is not currently meeting. As a sector we must make our services more flexible, welcoming, and responsive to this group of people.

Lack of appropriate support

The research found that the shelters varied greatly, some focusing on the provision of shelter and food and others offering some more specialist support in addition to this. The issue that concerned us most was the fact that shelters may not be equipped with the knowledge, expertise and resources to adequately support and manage some of the most vulnerable and chaotic homeless people.

In our opinion the shelters' lack of training and resources place both the users and volunteers in an incredibly vulnerable position and we do not feel that these shelters are appropriate to support such a highly vulnerable group; which we recognise are one client group who winter shelters support.

More joint working

Winter shelters, mainstream homelessness organisations and local authorities need to commit to increased joint working to ensure that all homeless people have access to appropriate, quality services all year round. We need to gain further information on the people who use winter shelters but are not linked in with mainstream homelessness services in order to better meet their needs in the future. By working together and sharing information our services can become more flexible, welcoming and responsive to current unmet need.