Medway Night Shelter

The Trustees have awarded £10,000 to the Medway Night Shelter.

The Medway Night Shelter is not permitted to run roaming shelters or dormitory style shelters due to the risk of coronavirus. The shared airspace and moving about across the Medway Towns is seen as likely to accelerate infection.  Consequently, they have been working on trying to find a static venue with individual rooms to house their homeless guests. The search for a suitable venue has been a challenge but they have found one. The hope is that the shelter will run for three months in this building from January until the end of March.  The plan is to provide shelter for six guests in individual rooms and to make them self-sufficient for the evenings that they are in situ, in order to reduce the potential for infection transmission.

This brings its own challenges in terms of what can be provided for each guest eg kettles, etc. In addition, this year there will be a need for a cleaner and possibly another p/t member of staff to ensure there is good supervision if guests are required to self-isolate.  Throughout this last year, a drop-in facility for homeless guests and also those that are vulnerably housed has been available to help them sustain their housing. During Covid 19 they have helped some families struggling to make ends meet and have used a small amount of funds to support them with food parcels.