News

Bridges members take a walk around the UEA broad following the sculpture trail

Understanding, hope, creativity and partnership between charities and organisations were the subject of discussion at Norwich Theatre Royal’s month-long focus on living with homelessness in the city.

A winter night support service designed to help provide additional care to people in mental health crisis is operating from St Martins' premises Under 1 Roof on Westwick Street.

Official figures for rough sleeping show that numbers in Norwich have fallen in the past year, with a reported 21 people sleeping rough in Norwich last November, significantly fewer than the recorded 30 in the previous year.

We are delighted to publish our Strategic Plan for St Martins, which shares our ambitions, plans and targets to take us through the next three years up to 2021.

To date St Martins has supported 12 people through the ‘street break’ initiative, with seven of these people being entrenched rough sleepers. Seven people who were supported by this initiative have now gone on to more permanent and secure housing.

We always see donations increase over the Christmas period and during the cold weather; a time when people empathise with the homeless. Two of our supporters, Alan and Adrian have used their resources to make a difference to local people in need.

Local supplier of storage materials Ese Direct have donated two roll containers, in partnership with their supplier, Palletower, which have already become invaluable to us in sorting and storing donations.

The total raised from the annual pre-Christmas street collection was £34,541.85, the highest ever amount reached in the 29 years the collection has been running.

Two of our members of staff, Nicky and Martin, who have worked with homeless people for many years, talk about the highs and lows of the job on the frontline working with homeless people.