Through our frontline outreach service, operating every Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from 7-10:30pm, Feed Our Homeless meet those sleeping rough on the streets of Dublin’s City Centre on a weekly basis. Our team
supports those we meet by giving advice, as we work in partnership with other organisations
to help people access accommodation as well as support services in the community such as
housing, education, social welfare, physical and mental health services, addiction services;
our team also provides hot meals, hot drinks, sleeping bags, some warm clothing and other
essentials such as toiletry packs, hats, gloves, scarves etc Anything to try and make the
service user comfortably for the night as most people we meet choose to stay on the street for
personal reasons.
Through our outreach work we get to know those who are sleeping rough. Our team build
good trusting relationships with those who we reach out to. Our outreach team have
cultivated good working relationship with relevant local organisations so that our team can
offer support and guidance to those we meet on the street to access help and emergency
accommodation.
Our team carry out targeted work in areas known to be most affected by large numbers of
rough sleepers.
Our first priority is to ensure that those sleeping rough on the streets are linked in with
services that can provide accommodation for a safe place to sleep, which is vital for those in
the process of moving forward, away from homelessness into independent living.
Homelessness encompasses a variety of ways in which people are forced into dangerous and
unhealthy ways to live, the most dangerous of which is rough sleeping, which claims 40-50
people in Ireland per year, according to recent Peter McVerry Trust figures. The risk of rough
sleeping is reflected in the mortality rates of those rough sleeping: age 47 for a man and 43
for a woman, according to research carried out in 2011 by Crisis.
Housing should be a human right and we believe that no-one’s dignity or quality of life
should be compromised through rough sleeping.
Feed Our Homeless frontline outreach service are at the coal-face of those working with
rough sleepers.