Comments from People at the Pathway Café

Brogan Berwick reports, following her visit to the Support Centre

Everyone who I spoke to praised the organisation and celebrated how successful the support centre is in ensuring all individuals are kept fed and also prepared to live on the streets by the resources the Pathway provides, including the clothes, sleeping bags, packaged food, and clean water
 
I spoke to people who weren’t rough sleepers but individuals who just struggled to make ends meet and therefore visited the Pathway to be given food that they were able to take home and use to feed themselves.
“The Pathway not only provides me with a warm meal but they kindly give me resources that I can then take away with me to feed myself for the other days of the week”. “Without this centre I would have probably starved to death months ago”. This is the sad reality that people who don’t have access to services like the Pathway could end up dead, and why the brilliant work of the Pathway should be expanded so that it can reach more communities
 
One commented that the citizen advice service that the Pathway provides, helps to remove some of the red tape that they encountered while trying to approach local councils themselves. The service made it easier for them to get the answers to the questions they were looking for to help them try and get back into housing or permanent housing
 
An individual referred to the centre as being his 'home'
 
The value of having safety and security within an environment is so important for these people who may have no other sense of security in their personal life, so the fact that the Pathway is able to supply this proves how necessary the service is

 
They said that the atmosphere of the centre was relaxed and calm and they were able to feel as though they had a sense of belonging. With the community atmosphere they found they could meet friends who they could then hang around with while sleeping rough or confide in because they were experiencing similar life experiences. People said this gave them a sense of safety because when sleeping rough within a group they felt less threatened

I was quite overwhelmed when I heard that they felt they had a voice within the Pathway centre. They commented on there being a lot of 'red tape' in the way of them accessing help from the council and authorities and because of this they felt disregarded, but none of this was felt towards the centre, they said how the centre acted like a 'bridge' connecting them to services and other people that could help them