Our five-year partnership with Network Rail has been hugely successful in tackling rough sleeping across Britain’s railways. In collaboration with several other housing charities including Railway Children and Crisis, the Routes out of Homelessness programme shared the aim of transforming the lives of people sleeping rough in and around stations. The programme offered outreach services with support to find accommodation and signposting those in urgent need to health, mental health and substance misuse services.
Award-winning outreach projects in Birmingham New Street and Manchester Picadilly services paved the way for a pilot service in London. We completed a contract running services in London Victoria Station in partnership with The Passage and at Charing Cross Station in partnership with The Connection at St Martin’s.
Outreach services
Our partners at The Passage and The Connection are local organisations with support networks and local expertise, and were best placed to deliver a responsive, on-the-ground service. These organisations work with people who are rough sleeping to build rapport, link them with wraparound support services and find them accommodation.
Across all our outreach work, we have helped over 400 people to find either temporary or permanent accommodation. Many more have been helped in other ways such as with their mental health or with making homelessness applications to the local council.
In addition to outreach work, we also built a bespoke training programme for all new and existing Network Rail staff. This training package aims to increase the knowledge and understanding of homelessness and develop staff confidence when engaging with this community.
Fundraising and volunteering
The Routes out of Homelessness programme included employee fundraising, colleague volunteering, station collections and space at stations including gifted JCDecaux screen advertising space.
Outside of the outreach service, Network Rail have supported us to fundraise through many different initiatives. A particular success has been our pioneering and award-winning retail roadshows which have seen pop-up Shelter shops in Scotland and London stations. The gifted station space and Network Rail volunteers have enabled us to raise over £40,000. The 2022 Network Rail and Shelter retail roadshow won Bronze for 'Best Collaborative Approach' at the Corporate Engagement Awards in September 2023. The success of the pop-ups with Network Rail led us to develop many more with other partners and in other spaces around the country.
