South Yorkshire youth homelessness charity Roundabout is launching a major new fundraising campaign to make sure it will be there keeping young people off the streets as quickly and safely as possible as winter approaches.
The past two years has seen an increase in the number of young people aged under 25 in the region who are sleeping rough.
These vulnerable young people immediately became a priority for the charity, leading to the formation of a new street outreach team, Rapid Rehousing.
The Rapid Rehousing team is made up of dedicated workers who actively go out into the community, identify homeless young people who need intensive support and help them to access accommodation and develop their long term living skills.
And throughout October, Roundabout is spearheading a new campaign - By Their Side - that will raise awareness of this service and also boost Roundabout’s long term income stream, making sure the charity can offer the support needed to turn around the lives of some of the most vulnerable young people in the area.
“This group of young people have extremely complex needs and often can’t access mainstream housing and homeless services as they are quite chaotic, often experiencing early child hood and continued trauma, have general ill health and undiagnosed health conditions, and can often be taken advantage of by older homeless people,” said Roundabout deputy CEO Tracey Jackson.
“They can be very wary of help from our services for various reasons – they may have even been excluded from other services in the past, but our intense and long term support can help them to turn their lives around, and you can help to make that difference."
