Sainsbury's Princes Ave Local

At Westbourne House, We provide short term accommodation 24 hours a day for 53 people. We serve 3 meals a day, ongoing support with a designated and committed support worker, signposting and referrals to any relevant services and assistance. Our education and enjoyable activities promote social inclusion and wellbeing. We want to help our service users to not only live independently but to thrive. That's why we offer assessments to all homeless people who attend our service. This helps us to understand any issues that are preventing each person from maintaining a tenancy successfully. We are then able to refer them to a more appropriate form of accommodation OR work with them with a person centred approach to help them become ready to live independently in the community.

At Ekklesia Hull our aim is to share God’s love in a practical way by supporting anyone in the community who’s struggling. We saw that many people are finding it difficult to make ends meet in our community so we decided to provide hot meals and sandwiches every Sunday in the afternoon to everyone. We had a gentleman say to us that, the meal was the first time he’s had something hot to eat all week. We also provide bagged rice, oil and essential food parcels to individuals and families in need, welcoming everyone regardless of background or faith. We know our resources are limited, but every donation helps us reach more people with kindness, dignity, and hope.

We work from our project base on Massey Street, St Georges Road, offering a range of support services to residents living in the Hessle Road area of Hull free of charge. Our sessions include; open access youth sessions where young people can take part in activities such as music, crafts, sport and team games as well as access support around issues they are experiencing such as bullying/friendships, staying safe, sexual health, mental health and drug and alcohol misuse. We also offer sessions which focus on increasing confidence, we deliver domestic abuse awareness raising sessions and offer school holiday activities. For young people who are experiencing more complex issues we offer intensive one to one support to help them to deal with what is happening more effectively. This support is tailored to individual need, lasts for as long as necessary and can include supporting young people to attend appointments, advocating on their behalf and offering a listening ear. We also offer sessions to local residents which focus on improving health and well-being, reducing isolation, improving confidence and self-esteem and increasing access to other services. We do this through sessions such as weekly coffee mornings, gardening groups, young parents play groups and cookery sessions. We also offer one to one support to adults and this can include help with debt management, domestic abuse, housing/homelessness, employability and mental health. This support can often be very intensive, spending several hours with a person who is in crisis, but often avoids the need for more specialised support being required. In addition to our group sessions and one to one support, we have a free community gym which is open to local residents and a charity shop which provides volunteering opportunities and offers good quality, used items to local residents at very cheap (or free) prices. Sadly, a lot of our work at the moment is focused on supporting people with the cost of living crisis and we find that many of our service users need more food parcels and support with fuel poverty. Whilst we don't operate a food bank (because we just don't have the resources), we do provide food parcels to people who are registered to our project although we are finding it difficult to keep up with the demand.