CRASH Helps Project Antifreeze Provide Year Round Support

Project Antifreeze (part of the Off the Fence charity) provides an outreach and advice service to homeless men and women that positively encourage clients to move away from a life of homelessness and unemployment.

The need

he objectives of the project include finding and engaging with homeless people and rough sleepers on the streets, assessing their needs and providing practical and emotional support.

Antifreeze’s dayshift is run from their drop in advice centre where volunteers offer food, drink, clothing, sleeping bags and toiletries to all clients. Once basic needs are met, staff then begin to work on long terms solutions and referrals.

776 individual rough sleepers accessed the charity’s services throughout the year and 686 sleeping bags were handed out.

All areas of the charity’s work are staffed by two full time and two part time staff members however, in a city that has seen a 27% rise in rough sleepers in the past year, the charity needed more staff and more space.

The solution

Antifreeze approached CRASH for a grant to fund the creation of an additional one to one room where confidential assessments could be carried out and a more efficient storage system for clothing and sleeping bags.

The social impact

This extra space has allowed the charity to increase their staffing level and provide more support both to the day centre and to the current staff which in turn enables them to support more vulnerable individuals.