Street Team and Soup Kitchens

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Street Work

GSC’s Street Work Team is an outreach, information, support and advice service working with almost 800 individuals a year who are sleeping rough or at risk of sleeping rough in Glasgow. It offers both crisis intervention - accessing emergency accommodation and health care, providing basic necessities such as sleeping bags and warm clothing, individual support and advocacy – and follow through work - needs assessments, referring on to social work, counselling, the NHS, & other services, and linking people with accommodation or resettlement.

People can contact the team via a free telephone number – nearly 15,000 calls were received over the year - or be referred by other agencies. The team’s work is carried out in many locations, including the city centre streets and in homeless day centres and soup kitchens. The team retains a crucial role, both ensuring people new to the streets are quickly assisted, and working with people with the most complex needs, who may have a long history of sleeping rough.

‘They’ve been there when I needed them – and they’re still there!!’

‘The street team were brilliant. Because I was in hospital they were finding me somewhere to stay, they were cracking up about me losing my place, they were fighting to get me somewhere for when I came out. They’re brand new!’

Soup Kitchens

Our soup kitchen has a crucial role in assisting people on the streets, and is often people’s first point of contact with the Simon Community. Approximately 70 volunteers from in and around Glasgow are involved in the running of the soup kitchen. The kitchen attempts to meet three areas of need:

Basic Necessities: it provides food, soup, tea & coffee.
Social and/or Emotional Needs: volunteers offer a befriending service.
Health, housing and persoanl development needs: volunteers will respond to requests for assistance in these areas by contacting GSC's Street Team.

The soup kitchen in Cadogan Street runs throughout the year on Sunday and Wednesday nights, serving between 30 and 60 people each night. Marks and Spencers donates food on both nights and there are usually between 30 – 40 bags of food handed out to service users. GSC also provides a Saturday afternoon indoor soup kitchen in Café Simon in partnership with the St. Simons Church, where it is located, every Saturday and Sunday.

These services are provided regardless of anyone’s current situation and are accessible to people who often have the most complex set of needs. It is one of the few services for people experiencing homelessness which does not impose a restriction on anyone’s access to it.

This year a review of the soup kitchen service took place in order to plan for future developments and improvements, and found a clear demand still apparent for the service, and over the coming year we will be looking to develop the areas identified in the review, such as the time and location of the kitchen, and how to improve the service further and the support offered to volunteers.

‘GUSH, Glasgow University’s Service for the Homeless, currently has over 30 volunteers, organised on a rota system, and each week three students provide hot drinks and biscuits at the Wednesday night soup kitchen on Cadogan Street. I’ve volunteered for GUSH for a year now, and I’ve really enjoyed it. For me, even more so as I’m originally not from the city, GUSH has been an opportunity to become involved in something really important and a chance to get to know Glasgow, and the people who live here, a lot better. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about homelessness and the people it affects. For me and the rest of the GUSH volunteers, our involvement with the Simon Community helps challenge those misconceptions – and perhaps help challenge the assumptions other people often make about students!’ Lesley Jackson, Soup Kitchen Volunteer