Fresh appeal for food and essential items to help the homeless in York
Kitchen for Everyone says their outreach service will be busy this Christmas.
There's a fresh appeal for donations of food items and essential clothing to help people on the streets of York this Christmas.
The Kitchen for Everyone team restarted their outreach service earlier this year, with a trolley of supplies to help those in need.
Now they're asking for help in supporting local foodbanks, saying there's a call for help over the festive period.
Jools Rebbeck is part of the outreach team at Kitchen for Everyone:
"We're looking at restarting our indoor services, bearing in mind what's going on with Covid. We restarted our outreach earlier in the year, and are hoping to do more indoor work from January.
"Luckily this Christmas we've had some fantastic monetary donations from various trusts and charities, who know the work we do and helped us to get started again. The physical requests for particular items are more to do with how we're doing our outreach work right into the community.
"We forget that often a cup of tea and a smiling face can do wonders for people. It's a hard life being on the streets, even if you've got a temporary stay in a hostel. Often just being nice and asking how things are going, offering a warm cup of tea, offering items...these are all simple things but can show somebody that you care about them.
"We're very lucky in York that we absolutely have enough beds, and when we get below zero there's an immediate sweep up to make sure we definitely get people off the streets and don't lose people to the cold.
"We're also very lucky that the new crash pad system is being trialled; it'll be great to see how that works this Christmas".