Rochdale Homeless: Common Sense Prevails

Town Hall Sleep-Out Event Postponed

Following high level talks with senior council officials, Chill-Out has called off the mass-sleep out at the Town Hall in protest at the cuts in the provision of emergency bed provision due to council cutbacks as they believe that significant progress has been made in order to address the homelessness crisis that has seen homelessness spiral by 200 percent within the past year.

After intense pressure from ‘Chill-Out’ over the past five weeks, the council has offered :-

• An immediate, high level review of the protocols involving emergency beds.
• An immediate high-level review of care management. (Both of these in the light not only of the evidence that we have produced based on actual cases but also on cases picked up by the council's own Team.)
• A Directory to be produced which will be distributed showing precisely what, where and how help is available.
• An early meeting to be set up with the Portfolio Holder to take this forward.
• Meetings between Chill-Out and senior council officers who will work with us on policy and to feed back to us on hostel provision and statistics.
• A pilot scheme based on Heywood involving volunteers and resources to provide supported tenancies.

This is NOT the end of 'Chill-Out'. Although the sleep-out is postponed, there is vital work for us to do in helping to draw up and monitor new policies that will provide an effective, caring and compassionate response to those in need that will put people rather than pounds, shillings and pence first.

We are doing a photo-call with Jimmy Cricket the renown Irish comedian this morning at 11.10 in the Memorial Gardens where we will announce the news.

There will be opportunities to photograph Jimmy wearing appropriate comedy night-attire doing a mock sleep-out on a park bench with the Town Hall providing a fitting back-drop.
Additional information

1. Chill-Out’ is an apolitical group and you can find out more about us by following our Blog at http://chilloutrmbc.blogspot.co.uk and also on Twitter @Chil1Out .
2. A homeless man died in Heywood, Rochdale just before Christmas when temperatures plummeted.

ENDIT