At Signposts, we offer all our clients accommodation and support. In our first stage projects we also provide them with 3 meals a day. We have to charge all our clients a service charge, which covers the cost of utilities and food (which we do not receive any funding for). Some of our clients come to us after extended or multiple periods of rough sleeping, and may also have experience of substance misuse, poor mental health, previous abuse, or been involved with the criminal justice system. These clients often find it very difficult to pay their service charges.

One example of this is Anna*, who is 23 years old. Anna spent most of her childhood in care, but ran away when she was 16 and has been rough sleeping on and off since then. Anna has been exploited and abused several times by people she thought she could trust. She is in active addiction for heroin and struggles to engage with support for this. Our outreach team started engaging with Anna in 2018. It was very hard to build up trust initially, and encourage her to move off the streets which was where she felt safe but earlier this year, she came into one of our accommodation projects and has been there ever since.

This is the first time Anna has been somewhere safe in a very long time. We know that she is not yet psychologically in a place where she can budget and pay bills, therefore we would like to cover the cost of her service charges for the next 6 months, which will give our team time to work with her at her own pace, and build on her inner strengths and talents to see what she can achieve.

Your kind donation will enable us to support more clients like Anna.

We have been able to start this Bursary Fund thanks to the generosity of local company ML Accessories, trading as Knightsbridge. Their kind donation has kickstarted the fund, but we need your help to continue it.

(*Name changed)