Capital Renewal

Having occupied the building where the Night  Shelter is for 20 years we have reached a point where a lick of paint simply is not enough to  provide the standard of accommodation our  homeless residents deserve. Our main capital project is therefore the long term refurbishment of the Night Shelter’s bedrooms and lounges. We have already done the bedrooms and as you  can see from the pictures of “before and after”  it has made a huge difference to standard of accommodation that we can now offer in those  rooms. We have also completed a refit of the  main kitchen and the teas kitchen and we are  almost ready to buy and install the machines. We are currently refurbishing the lounges to include a training room. This has been made possible by  the recent fund raising effort of Colne Housing Association. They have raised more than  £4,000 this year (2013).

Before

After: Bedrooms donated by Lauren Evans fundraising and other community organisations

Donated by Colchester Borough Homes

Services

We have a Personal development Worker who does in house training to prepare our residents for more independent living. These include budgeting and cooking as well as stress management. The courses available as “ Universal Class “ on the internet is also open to access for residents by appointment. The programme is developing and residents and staff are welcome to discuss future inclusions.

We are looking to provide more daytime services for the resident to give them access to the computer and in return they would help with maintenance tasks at the Shelter. We hope that this will be a small beginning to establish a systematic training and employment programme for the residents.

We are also looking at ways to extend support to the residents who have the most complex needs and possibly
involve agencies such as the learning disabilities team and the mental health teams . We do however need finance for this even if only as a small beginning.

If you want to help with this, go to the fund raising pages of this web site and see what people have done in the past. We look forward to hearing from you.