B&Q St.Helens

Your Local Pantry helps fight food poverty and provide sustainable food. We charge £5 weekly membership at each visit and you chose 10 items inc fresh meat , coffee, tea, cereal , other tinned items and fresh fruit and veg to help with the weekly shop. By joining you also help stop good good ending up in landfill

We work over two locations in St Helens. The first ‘Hope House’ is a town centre building which acts as a drop in centre providing basic needs services, support, advocacy and signposting to those experiencing homelessness, those at risk of homelessness and those seeking treatment for drug and alcohol misuse. Our service users are able to access a breakfast club five mornings a week, shower facilities and fresh clothing with access to laundry. Further support is available in the form of advice, signposting and referral to specialist support to help people move forward. We also provide access to IT and a phone as well as providing a correspondence address so that those who don't have stable accommodation can engage with mainstream services. Our second location in Atherton Street, acts as home to our Training Centre and Gateway Service. Here a bespoke course is available to support people with their self-esteem and confidence building individuals' aspirations and assertiveness to achieve their goals. Learners are also invited to engage with learning IT and our work club which supports people back into work. St. Helens Foodbank is administered from this centre with one of the hubs based at the Hope Centre and our other project, Baby Basics, works in partnership with health visitors to provide practical starter packs of new and donated essential items to mums who are unable to prepare for their new arrival.

The Brick is a small charity that delivers big results for the community it serves. As its name suggests, it provides a safe, solid building block for people in crisis to begin to construct a new life and become valuable members of society. Since it began life in 2008, The Brick has become a real force for social change in Wigan Borough. The charity’s original aim was to support homeless people and help them make the transition from the streets back into independent living. The Brick’s remit has developed and evolved significantly over the years and it adopts an holistic approach to supporting people in need. The organisation seeks not just to help get people out of crisis but to transforms lives through training and work-experience opportunities that lead to real independence. In a typical week The Brick sees nearly 200 people who need help with issues such as financial hardship, fuel poverty, homelessness and domestic violence. It speaks to more than twice this number over the phone. It delivers 150 food parcels, serves 50 hot lunches and provides training opportunities for more than 30 people. The Brick is seen as an honest broker between its clients and the statutory service providers both in the borough and beyond. Working closely with other public services, The Brick has become a fundamental part of the care and enablement pathway for people in crisis in the borough. The organisation has attracted a diverse range of volunteers who know that in order for the community to thrive, each individual member of that community must thrive. Ultimately, The Brick provides the fresh hope of a brighter future to those who are, for a variety of reasons, struggling with their current circumstances.