Your donation could help someone like Zahra into a safe home

£100

could go towards travel costs for ten people, making attending a flat viewing or job interview possible, and helping them start their journey out of homelessness.

£250

could help someone set up their new home, helping pay for a bed, fridge, cooker or washing machine, as well as dinnerware, cookware and bedding.

£800

could go towards a rent deposit to help someone secure a new place to live.

£1056

could give someone a week of one-to-one support and coaching with one of our lead workers, helping them develop skills to find, secure and maintain a home.

Thousands of families are trapped in unsafe hotels for months, or even years.

Over the last ten years, the number of households forced into temporary accommodation in England alone has almost doubled, affecting over 145,800 children. In hotels and B&Bs, families are often living in one room with no cooking facilities. They don’t know when – or even if – the council will help them to secure a home.

Decades of failing to build enough social housing and provide the support needed to end homelessness means thousands of people are currently trapped in appalling conditions. It’s not right and it’s devastating people’s lives.

That’s why, together we will support families like Zahra’s out of unsafe hotels, into their own homes where they can rebuild their lives and thrive.

How your support helped Zahra and her children into a safe home

When Zahra’s marriage broke down, she was forced to live in a hotel room with her children that was infested with cockroaches and bedbugs. There was nowhere to store food or cook meals. And no space for the children to study or play. These conditions were not only debilitating for their physical health, but for their mental health too.

But despite proactively contacting her council month after month, Zahra felt no closer to securing a home. In fact, she began to lose hope of ever getting out of the hotel.

“I’d been in the hotel for more than six months and had no sense of when it would end. My autistic son was really struggling with the conditions. I contacted Crisis because we didn’t get the support we needed.” Zahra

Thanks to your generosity, Zahra was matched with her Crisis Lead Worker, Sophie. With Sophie’s support, Zahra was able to make progress with the council, access healthcare and improve her wellbeing. Most importantly, Zahra was able to move out of the hotel and into a stable home with her children.

 

“Sophie worked like an advocate. She sent emails to the temporary housing officer who I was contacting. But it’s not just help with housing, Crisis also support you with education, wellbeing and your health. I’ve just moved into rented accommodation. I’m in a good place now and Crisis can stop working with me.” Zahra

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How your support helps people out of homelessness

When someone comes to Crisis for help out of homelessness, they receive a warm welcome from a member of our Engagement and Assessment team. We talk through their situation and make sure that anyone who would benefit from services, support and advice elsewhere are signposted and referred. When we are best placed to help, we rapidly allocate a Lead Worker and they become a Crisis member.

Our Lead Workers provide one-to-one tailored support and coaching to help our members find ways out of homelessness. Lead Workers have different specialisms and they are paired with members based on the specific needs and challenges they’re facing.

Crisis psychologists train and support our frontline staff to develop the skills, confidence, and emotional ability to work positively with members who have experienced trauma. Our psychologists also provide one-to-one support to members who are facing mental health challenges and have been unable to access psychological services elsewhere.

Crisis members can engage with our learning and skills programmes while working with their Lead Workers. Programmes include vocational training, technical qualifications and equipment to help someone find their way back into employment, arts and wellbeing sessions, and practical sessions to help with finding, securing, and maintaining a home.

The goal of all our work with members is for them to find a safe, decent, and affordable home. Our relationship with members ends when their home is sustainable. Crisis are lobbying the Government for new affordable homes, and we are launching a new not-for-profit lettings agency to improve housing supplies for our members and people at risk of homelessness.

Why donate to Crisis

We are the national charity for homeless people. We know that homelessness is not inevitable. We know that together we can end it.

Your donation helps to fund our year-round work with people experiencing homelessness. We offer individual tailored support to help people access benefits, healthcare services, employment opportunities, and more.

Our main aim is to relieve the huge pressure of homelessness, by helping people find safe and affordable homes.

We campaign on the political changes needed to end homelessness for good and conduct research to understand and highlight the scale, causes and consequences of homelessness.

How we spend your pound
A pie chart that describes how we spend your pound. For every £1 we spend, 61p of this goes on our charitable expenditure, 34p goes on fundraising and 4p on our charity shops.

 

For every £1 we spend on fundraising, we raise £3.14 to fund our charitable services.

Our fundraising promise

We are registered with the Fundraising Regulator and promise to be honest, respectful, and accountable in how we treat you.

Where we give example stories about our members, we promise these are genuine experiences, even if their names or photos are changed to respect their privacy.

Although we cannot guarantee your donation will be spent on specific items or services, we can guarantee your donation will be used wherever it is needed most to help our work all year round with people facing homelessness.

Contact our Supporter Care team

Please contact our supporter helpline if you have any questions about making a donation to Crisis. You can also contact us if you would like to change the way we communicate with you.

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