Lend a Hand, Change a Life with Street Aid

Lancaster District Street Aid is an easy and secure way for the public to help people who are determined to stay off the streets.

You may have heard of Calico, Let’s BeFriends, Acorn and others who work alongside Lancaster City Council to help rough sleepers with housing support, drug or alcohol addiction treatment, and social activities.

Once people are on their way to a new start, Street Aid helps them out with an opportunity to benefit from goods or services which make a real home and a more meaningful life. Since January 2021, the public’s generous donations have paid for training courses to help people get back to their former jobs, travel passes, replacement identification documents, and household essentials such as bedding, carpets, microwaves, crockery and cutlery.

These are things that most would agree are essential for normal living conditions, but other support schemes don’t usually provide them. As one man who benefitted from a Street Aid grant told us, “sometimes people fall on hard times and to have this service helps people feel normal.”

With fewer people carrying cash, we’ve made it easy to donate to Street Aid in other ways. You can give £3 with a tap of your phone or card at donation points across Lancaster and Morecambe – these include Dalton Square Pharmacy, Citizens Advice North Lancashire (George Street Lancaster and Queen Street Morecambe), Festival Market, Treasure Island, The Cornerstone, and City Council Customer Service Points at Lancaster and Morecambe Town Halls.

Alternatively, you can give £3 from anywhere in an instant by texting STREET to 70450 (text costs £3 plus one standard rate network message), or larger amounts by visiting lancastercvs.org.uk/streetaid, where you can also find out more about how Street Aid works and how it helps people turn their lives around.

Giving money on the street might be a temporary solution to hunger for an individual, or it might go towards maintaining addictions, even among people who are already being supported into treatment.

Street Aid is different because requests for money are made by the local support agencies you already know, who are best placed to know what each person they work with most needs. Their organisation receives and spends the grant on the specified item themselves – so Street Aid donors can be sure the money will be spent on something that can make a real and long-term difference.