Helping People Home This Christmas with Street Aid

On the run up to Christmas we often see an increase in people asking about how they can get involved with local good causes, especially those supporting the homeless. One way to do that is through Lancaster District Street Aid.

Organisations like Calico, Let’s BeFriends, Acorn, and others, work alongside Lancaster City Council to help rough sleepers through housing support, drug or alcohol addiction treatment, and social activities.

Street Aid enhances their work by providing funds for items which help them feel at home in their accommodation and build a new life. Over the last four years, 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.

Often other support schemes don’t provide such items, but these are the things that help people to really live and not simply exist. 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.”

Giving money to someone 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 staff at local support agencies, who work with people to understand what they most need. Their organisation receives and spends the grant on the item themselves, on behalf of the recipient – so Street Aid donors can be sure that the money will be spent on something that can make a real, positive, and long-term difference.

In total, more than £20,000 has been donated since Street Aid started in 2021, benefitting over 40 individuals or families with an average grant value of £350.

With fewer people carrying cash, donating to Street Aid has been made really easy. You can give £3 with a tap of your phone or card at donation points in various places around Lancaster and Morecambe.

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 at totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/streetaid

To find out more about how Street Aid works, and how it helps people turn their lives around, visit lancastercvs.org.uk/streetaid