How we support rough sleepers
Our outreach team work with local partners, community groups and charities to do all they can to help people sleeping rough in Islington to get into accommodation and get their lives back on track.
Our specialist team works with them to tackle issues like substance misuse, mental health and homelessness.
What do we do?
We offer a range of tailored support to anyone sleeping rough in Islington, and will continue to look at innovative ways to help them into safe and secure accommodation.
Anyone who is regularly on the street in Islington will have been approached by one of our services, had an initial assessment and been offered support.
This support includes:
- Addressing complex issues: our outreach teams work with people sleeping rough to understand how they became homeless and to look at how we can help them to address it. This includes offering specialist support to tackle drink and drug addictions, or issues with mental health.
- Providing somewhere safe to go: we work with local organisations to offer drop-in facilities, shelters and supported accommodation and to provide intensive support to encourage people sleeping rough to engage with other services and move away from the streets permanently.
- Providing additional winter shelter: we set up additional shelter during the winter months to ensure people sleeping rough have access to accommodation, and to prevent anyone from dying on the streets. When the temperature reaches 0C or below, Islington’s Severe Weather Emergency Protocol (SWEP) is activated, and specially trained staff from the council and partner organisations work quickly to ensure all people sleeping rough in Islington, whatever their circumstances, are provided with emergency accommodation. You can read the full plan in the Useful Documents section.
We are also looking at ways to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. You can read more about our work to prevent homelessness and end rough sleeping in our Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy, and on our housing pages.
You can find out about all the homeless services in Islington and across London at the London Housing Foundation Atlas of Homelessness Services.
Our key partners
- St Mungo’s – provide our street based outreach service and some hostels in the borough
- The Manna – a day centre offering food, clothing and showers plus benefits advice and access to homeless outreach services
- Union Chapel – run the Margins Project, a day centre for those homeless and in crisis in London
- Streets Kitchen – local charity providing food and clothing to those on the streets
- Single Homeless Project (SHP) - provide supported accommodation and floating support to people with history of homelessness, substance misuse issues, mental health and offending
- Groundswell – offer homeless health peer advice and support to people to access health support
- Women at the Well - local charity for women, supporting women who are at risk of being affected by prostitution
If you are concerned about someone sleeping rough
If you are concerned about the wellbeing of someone who is sleeping rough on the streets, call Street link on 0300 500 0914 or visit Streetlink. This sends an alert to the local outreach team who will visit the location to make contact with the person. If you any immediate concerns for their health call 999 and request an ambulance.
If you are homeless yourself or worried about becoming homeless contact the council’s Housing Aid Centre on 020 7527 2000.
