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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.
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