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6 June 2019

Glass Door has finished our busiest winter on record, but we're not resting on our laurels. The team at Glass Door are looking ahead and enacting ambitious plans to address the increasing need for our services. 

With an ever-growing population needing our help, we need to expand our provision to support more of London’s rough sleepers. Subject to securing the requisite funding as well as suitable new venue churches, we’ll have a fifth shelter circuit up and running in November 2019. This will enable us to increase the number of guests we help each night up to about 170. 

We’ll also be keeping in mind the need for more provision for women. We typically find that spaces in our shelter become available less often than spaces for men – partly because there are less spaces for women overall and partly because our female guests often have some of the most complex needs.

But it’s not only about increasing the number of guests we help; we will also be looking at how we can make our existing services even better. We don’t want to simply provide a place to sleep, we want to provide an environment that feels more like home. For example, in recognition that mobile phones can be a lifeline in the modern age, we plan to improve access to charging stations and WIFI in our shelters. 

We want to provide as swift a transition as possible from our shelters into more permanent accommodation. And we want to support our guests in their life beyond the shelters – helping to ensure that they can stay in their new employment or housing and build a positive future.

We recently welcomed a new Tenancy Support Worker to the team, who will do exactly that, working with newly-housed guests to help them understand their responsibilities as tenants, supporting them through those often tricky first few months.

Over the summer we will continue to develop our partnerships with local authorities, housing providers, and other agencies, to ensure we are offering the best possible chance of a successful, long term outcome for each one of our guests.

There is plenty of work to do, but by pulling together the goodwill and resources of our wonderful community, I know we will achieve it.

- Lucy Abraham

Glass Door Chief Operating Officer