Anglican Communion News Service - Digest News

From the Office of the Archbishop of York

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu this morning launched the city’s response to the government initiative to ‘End Rough Sleeping: No Second Night Out’ at the Salvation Army, Gillygate, York.

Rough sleeping represents the most extreme form of housing need and can have a devastating long-term impact on a person’s health and well-being. The services dedicated to No Second Night Out, will help agencies in York tackle this issue.

Speaking at the Launch, the Archbishop said: “Homelessness is a problem which forces us to reconsider the values on which we are building our society. The challenge of ‘No Second Night Out’ is to provide better choices for people, and appropriate to their individual needs, so that people choose to take up the offers of support that are made.

“The idea behind it is not just to take people off the streets, to ‘sweep them out of sight’; rather it is to move quickly to find a place of safety for those without a home and, where possible to reconnect them to their own community. In this way those helpful links which have been broken may be rebuilt and restored, before the dislocation becomes too great. Our role is to be the connectors with the homeless, the communities they come from, and the agencies who can offer help.”

The aim of No Second Night Out is that:

1. New rough sleepers should be identified and helped off the streets immediately so that they do not fall into a dangerous rough sleeping lifestyle.

2. Members of the public should be able to play an active role by reporting and referring people sleeping rough.

3. Rough sleepers should be helped to access a place of safety where their needs can be quickly assessed and they can receive advice on their options.

4. Rough sleepers should be able to access emergency accommodation and other services, such as healthcare, if needed.

5. If people have come from another area or country and find themselves sleeping rough, the aim should be to reconnect them back to their local community unless there is a good reason why they cannot return. There, they will be able to access housing and recovery services and have support from family and friends.

The ‘No Second Night Out’ scheme has been developed with the Salvation Army, the Peasholme Charity, Arc Light, City of York Council, the Foundation, YACRO, Restore and Richmond Fellowship.

The partners and City of York Council are asking the public to help by calling a new helpline if they see a rough sleeper – especially in areas away from the city centre. People can call the national rough sleeper helpline launched by Homeless Link, a national organisation representing and supporting 500 organisations working with homeless people in the UK.

StreetLink enables members of the public to quickly connect rough sleepers to local support services by:

• telephoning the 24/7 StreetLink phone line 0300 500 0914
• using the StreetLink website www.streetlink.org.uk from a desktop computer or mobile.
• downloading the StreetLink App from the iTunes or Google Market store free of charge.

Once contact has been made, in York, StreetLink contacts the Salvation Army’s early intervention and prevention team who provide outreach support to rough sleepers. When identified, the Salvation Army will contact the rough sleeper, offer advice, support and accommodation to those wishing to move off the street.