Inverness Care Shelter [Full Article] In February 2009, Inverness Presbytery, in partnership with other Churches in the city and the Bethany Christian Trust from Edinburgh, ran a 2 week pilot project providing a Winter Care Shelter for rough sleepers in the city. In total, 53 people used this service (44 men and 9 women with
an average age of 38 years), and an average of 5.5 stayed overnight. 60% of the service users had
drug problems, and 50% had problems with alcohol. Inverness Presbytery organised a Follow-On Conference in March at which the Bethany Christian Trust presented an Evaluation of the project, and all the other agencies working with the homeless were invited as well. In April, building upon discussions begun at the Conference, the churches began meeting to decide what should happen this winter. We knew from statistics gleaned during the project that 7 people with no viable alternative accommodation had used the Shelter, and in June, Highland Council figures confirmed that there had been 5 – 7 rough sleepers in the city over the previous six months. These rough sleepers were drawn from two categories – people with chaotic lifestyles resulting in extreme anti-social behaviour making it very difficult for Highland Council to provide them
with accommodation, although they continued to try to work with this group to remedy their housing problems; and
foreign nationals who had not registered with the Workers’ Registration Scheme and who were not therefore entitled to benefits, including housing benefit. Taking the needs of these people into account, and conscious of our Lord’s teaching in Matthew 25, the Presbytery and the other Churches eventually resolved to try to run another Care Shelter this year with the Bethany Christian Trust. This did not, however, prove easy. We faced concerns from other homelessness agencies about the cost of the project (£36,811 for 12 weeks) – there would be competition for funding; whether this was the best use of available resources – would the money be better spent on drug and alcohol prevention treatment? Would it be liable to duplicate work being carried out by other agencies? And we
suffered a major blow when our application to the Inverness City Committee’s Common Good Fund was turned down due to concerns
about the sustainability of the project. Satisfied that there was still a gap in provision (confirmed by a senior official from Highland Council in June) and that our efforts did not duplicate the work of other agencies, we pressed on, appealing to churches, individuals (including the students from the Highland Theological College, joined by members of the Youth Group and their Leaders from Hilton Church of Scotland who organised a Sponsored Sleep-Out on a cold November night!), charitable trusts and the Church of Scotland Parish Development Fund (who awarded us a further £5,000 pilot project grant) until we managed to secure enough funding to allow the Bethany Christian Trust to advertise for four local staff members and confirm the project would go ahead! The Salvation Army helped too by providing Food
Hygiene Training free of charge to the project. No fewer than 18 churches from across denominational boundaries and 20
catering teams (16 from local churches and 4 from the community) have joined forces to provide a hot meal and safe sleeping space in church halls across the city for all 84 nights – a great tribute to the determination and resilience of local church folk’s resolve to make a difference this winter and avoid people having to endure the circumstances depicted in the picture above. In the first two weeks 8 different service users made use of the service – 4 from Eastern Europe and 4 from the UK, with an average of 4 people sleeping over in the first week, and 5 in the second. Numbers have been slightly lower than expected – possibly due to Highland Council securing premises to work with difficult to house people (something we had not anticipated – but we can hardly
complain about Highland Council finding new ways to help the homeless!) And we are having talks with Highland Council on future provision
– a big step forward from earlier this year! There is talk of another Evaluation Conference in March and talks are to continue in the New Year. It was a good feeling over Christmas knowing that this year there was “room at the Inn” for the city’s rough sleepers – and that nobody needed to sleep out in the cold. Vivian Roden, Presbytery of Inverness Back to Top | 
