A Bed Every Night is a commitment to provide a bed, welcome, hot meal and support for anyone sleeping rough in Greater Manchester.
The programme will make every effort to address the needs of those rough sleeping, offering additional temporary accommodation with lower criteria than statutory provision; removing them from the risk of extreme weather, improving health and wellbeing.
A Bed Every Night is one part of a new systematic approach across Greater Manchester to tackle homelessness. While inside the emergency provision, staff will work proactively with individuals, referring agencies, accommodation providers and other services to try to find suitable move-on options or reconnection.
Plans for this winter are currently being agreed and clarified based on government guidelines around covid. We will update as soon as we know more details. In the interim, referrals can still be made to Boaz Trust for shared housing through completing a referral form on their website. Places are very limited and are slow moving (particularly due to Covid) therefore they cannot guarantee every person referred will be accommodated.
This is a complicated challenge and it won't be perfect right from the start. We will learn and adapt as we go, incorporating new people and new ideas. It will be evaluated by the people coming into these spaces and judged by who we still meet outside.
Not every environment suits everybody, we will learn about individual needs as we get to know individual people. This gives us the time to work with people and gives people the time to have a stable start for creating a life that makes sense to them.
The people we work with have had varied experiences with the system, not always positive - it takes time, compassion and imagination to rebuild trust in these circumstances. This is where YOU can help - please donate items, time, or money to make A Bed Every Night possible.
We want to provide more than a bed, this provision is an opportunity to form a relationship, to understand the person and have a stable start to making a life that makes sense to them around a safe place to stay. We want to build a supportive, therapeutic relationship for a time of personal crisis that people can be referred in to.
The innovation in this project is the whole region working together; the public sector, voluntary sector, faith sector, grassroots groups, businesses and citizens. Local connection will be GM wide, with individuals reconnected to their local authority the following day where possible.
While we won't turn people away, this scheme is only available to people whose last address was in Greater Manchester. We simply do not have the resources to open it up to people from further afield.
Succeeding in this mission will be a challenge, but one that we must rise to; working together, learning as we go along, and continually adapting how this works based on what people experiencing homelessness and frontline workers tell us. If you have questions, concerns or suggestions, please get in touch at aben@streetsupport.net.