York homeless charity appealing for indoor centre to help more people
Kitchen for Everyone provides food, clothing and support to homeless people in the city.
A York charity providing homeless people in the city with food, clothing and toiletries says it needs a permanent base to help more people.
The team at Kitchen for Everyone go out every Saturday and Monday night with a trolley of supplies to help those in need.
Their outreach service returned recently, and demand is expected to increase over the coming weeks as the weather gets colder.
Greatest Hits Radio York joined team leaders Mark Bewick, Nicky Hayer and Jools Rebbeck this week to see first hand the work they do.
Mark explains the kind of items they have on the portable trolley to help:
"We have two hot flasks to help with teas, coffees and hot food including porridge and pot noodles - just so people have got something hot in their tummy on a cold night.
"We've also got supplies such as hats, gloves, socks, underwear and hand warmers. There's a bit of everything - anything that's portable for us to carry about.
"Previously we had been carrying the flasks back home, refilling them and then carrying them back out again. From our work with Scott on the day job - one of the managers at the Hilton Hotel - he said we could come in and fill up with hot water there to save on the journey. It's great that local businesses want to help support us".
Nicky Hayer says they help a wide range of people with different needs:
"It's a real of mix; I don't think there's any way to sum everyone up really. Generally it's people going through a really rough period; either some form of addiction or health issue. Some have come out of prison, and some have had all sorts of bad things happen to them. They just need help - right now.
"A huge part of it is having someone listen to you, and not feeling like you're sitting on the street with people walking past and ignoring you. I think the power of having a conversation with someone and feeling listened to is really important with this".
The team have a small storage space where they can stock up and deliver supplies to help people.
The charity also has an Amazon wish list page, where members of the public can buy items such as food and sleeping bags to help. The list can be found here.
Jools Rebbeck says it's vitally important that they can have an indoor base again to help more people who are struggling:
"I think we gave out about 10-12 sleeping bags on Monday, which is unusually busy for that day of the week. Normally 10-20 lots of hot drinks is quite a normal amount to hand out, and sometimes people are taking things away to help for the following morning.
"People never really know the full backstories of people, and people are very different. When we do our indoor services we often meet people who are actually in accommodation, but it's very tentative. They still need that support in the early stage.
"The outreach service sees the extreme of people who genuinely have nowhere to sleep and are in doorways. There are wet sleeping bags and genuine coldness.
"A base makes a massive difference. We've heard it tonight from people asking 'when will you be back indoors?' When we go into the cold months it's even more important that we can get somewhere warm for people to eat, sit, relax and get a chance to talk to us.
"At the moment we're not able to do our dentist and podiatry services, which we used to supplemented our services with. As soon as we're back indoors we can bring all that extra stuff back into play again, which is fantastic".