I'm quite overwhelmed this year by the support given to the
Glasgow Winter Night Shelter. I’m also challenged by the number of people
calling for the extension of the service and to go beyond delivering a 13 week emergency
service. Your passion for this work is precious and I want to try an answer
your question as best I can.
Closing the night shelter at the end of the season is never
an easy thing for us to do. Our team all ache in the knowledge that for some, they’ll
be back on the streets.
Yet the situation is complicated as I'm sure you can
imagine. In fact I personally find myself going backwards and forwards in my
mind wrestling with running an all year shelter, the pros and cons.
There isn't
an easy answer, but I want to share with you the arguments and what we feel we
can do.
Homelessness is a symptom of many other things that are
broken. While many believe addiction is the main cause of homelessness it is
actually relationship breakdown that is one of the main factors leading to
homelessness. Shelters, while important and often lifesaving, don’t provide
long term solutions for those who are homeless. We want to see an end to
homelessness and tackle the root causes of it and prevent it in the first
place.
As well as tackling the causes of homelessness, we need to
provide stable environments for people to heal and grow, this often means
accommodation with intensive support to move forward, and we need to help
people to take steps to improve their circumstances. Glasgow has a shortage of
accommodation, and needs a blend of all types of accommodation to suit a
variety of different scenarios.
The Glasgow Winter Night Shelter operates as a conduit over
the winter months directing and plugging users into the local authority
services and those of other providers including our own city centre project. It
also acts as an emergency shelter during the harshest months of the winter. The
local authority has a duty of care for many of those we serve at the night
shelter, and we want Glasgow City Council to deliver on their responsibility.
We believe this is a significant step forward and worth our while investing our
time and resources as it has the potential to provide sustainable improvements.
If we increase the length of our service we’re also nervous that the shelter
becomes an accepted norm in our society rather than highlighting the scandal
that homelessness is. It also could prevent the local authority from tackling
the issue if they sense that we’ll always provide a service.
I'm nervous to talk about costs, only that I don’t want to use costs per say as a reason not to do something. However to give you an
idea of the challenge ahead of us, if we increased our service to include
November and March our costs would jump from around £55,000 to at least
£115,000. Some of the increase in cost is because we would need to increase our
staffing numbers to accommodate the scope for service. Furthermore we’d need more volunteers willing
to give up their time, we were short of volunteers this year and extending the
time increases the commitment. It’s possible – but it’s a challenge.
It’s also desperately sad that people die on the streets
during the summer months also; all too often the people we work with die in
violent crime or drug overdose. We want to work all year round to prevent this
from happening.
Many of those that financially support the work of the
Glasgow Winter Night Shelter are suppliers of accommodation to vulnerable
people and they are working tirelessly in their efforts to help people move
into supported accommodation.
Any decision to extend the service would be taken in
partnership with those who help us provide the service. The decision would also
need to be made in September or October during the planning stages of the
initiative to ensure the correct ratio of staff are employed.
One of our objectives is that in the future there is no need
for the Glasgow Winter Night Shelter. To achieve this, other services need to
improve and we’ll only know if this is happening if numbers start to drop at
the night shelter. Looking at the data this year our service is still very much
needed.
I hope this memo doesn't sound as though we have comfortably
come to our conclusions, we also weep with the knowledge that every night in
Glasgow there are people sleeping rough and we want to help. I also hope that
this memo doesn't appear as an excuse for doing less because we feel compelled
to do more – we must find a way of doing more which has the most impact. It
mustn’t become about what makes me feel better, but rather what genuinely makes
the best impact on people who have chaotic lifestyles.
Unfortunately increasing the time that we run the service
for isn’t a decision that can be made at the last minute. The shelter requires
a significant amount of planning and once the dates are set, staff are brought
on board for a particular time.
Can I reassure you that there will be discussions about running
next years’ service for a longer period and I will do my best to express the
depth of feeling from our supporters to the other partners involved with the night
shelter.
Can I personally thank you for your support, interest,
prayers and passion and I look forward to working with many of you again in
providing a much needed service.