Whitby Street Angels needs more volunteers to enable regular patrols
The volunteers go out on Saturday nights
Volunteers are needed so Whitby Street Angels can go out on weekly patrols again.
The team currently go out on Saturday nights every two weeks, but they are wanting to go back to seven days like they used to.
They make sure people get home, or have somewhere to stay, safely as well as helping those in need.
Pam Boland is a volunteer and she says numbers have dropped: "We were going out once a week and sometimes twice a week in festival time like Goth Weekends, we'd go out on the Friday and then the Saturday. Pre Covid we were managing to go out once a week on a Saturday night but then Covid came and we didn't go out at all for about 18 months.
"Members are still supporting us now but not going actively out on patrol. They have their own relatives that they must protect, or loved ones that they don't want to take Covid back to, or people just took the opportunity to retire and withdraw from the patrols.
"The fact that there's less of us we might miss things that we're not running every week and we're not there to pick up things like homeless people coming in or injury. When we do see somebody who needs our help on the Saturday night when we're there, it does cross my mind 'what would happen next week if the same was to happen again and we don't have a team?'
"Goth weekend was the busiest. I was out that weekend and that was the busiest I think we've ever had it in 10 years. It was like hospital triage but we got through that. I was out a couple of weeks ago and it really was much more manageable.
"It can be emotional support that we provide, if people are out and having a drink it can do strange things, people fall over and hurt themselves so they'd need a plaster, sometimes there can be aggression involved where someone's injured.
"We don't like to see people on their own and we tend to make a bit of a nuisance of ourselves I guess to make sure that people are actually safe and heading home safely. We know that we can't force anybody to do anything that they don't want to. We can meet people who can't get themselves home for one reason or another."
You can find out more about Whitby Street Angels and contact them on Facebook or on their website.