Nightwatch

Our core activity is providing prime and direct support for homeless people in Croydon through work undertaken solely by volunteers. We help people at every level of homelessness, from the street homeless to those in hostels and bed and breakfast accommodation and vulnerable former homeless people who need continuing support if they are not to become homeless again.

Our Objectives

• To act as first line contact for homeless people, to sign-post them to other agencies
• To provide urgent and necessary items of food, clothes, toiletries, pots, pans, household goods to homeless people in need
• The stabilisation of former homeless people in new accommodation
• To assist in helping unemployed homeless people (both financially and emotionally) to take up vocational training and education.
• To befriend homeless people to encourage empowerment and increase in confidence
• To educate the community at large in Croydon about the realities of homelessness.

Brief History

Nightwatch was founded in 1976 when a group of local people came together concerned after the death of a homeless man in Croydon. Their interests coincided with those of Rev Martin Wharton of Croydon Parish Church who had spent many nights walking round the borough meeting homeless people. Rev Martin, now the Bishop of Newcastle, was the first chair of the organisation and for the first sixteen years Nightwatch was based at the Parish Church Hall.

Nightwatch built up facilities and hostels over the following years, always retaining a strong volunteer base. By the early 1990s there were three Nightwatch hostels but homelessness in Croydon was increasing. The effect of government policies and general social changes massively increased the numbers of homeless people we were seeing while at the same time restricting the availability of new housing.

Changes to the legislation relating to hostels meant it would be better for them to be run by a housing association so in 1992 we gave our hostels to the Croydon Churches Housing Association and expanded street level work to confront the new homelessness crisis. We recently renovated a derelict church building in central Croydon that we use as a kitchen and store.

Supplementary material (available on request) 'A Century of Caring: 25 years of Nightwatch'; a history of Nightwatch prepared for our 25th anniversary.