Throughout our journey we have worked with and have been supported by great teams of volunteers, staff, organisations, and professionals giving their time and skills in support of single homeless people.
Seven local churches came together to provide hot meals and spaces to sleep for homeless people. That year we provided 10 homeless people with a place to sleep each night.
Volunteers provided meals and sleeping bags. We acquired temporary premises and appointed our first manager. We supported 250 homeless people and moved 32 people into permanent accommodation.
We opened the first winter night shelter open from November to May in Waltham Forest, staffed by volunteers.
We had additional support from local organisations and were able to set up a day centre for street homeless people and rough sleepers in temporary premises. An average of 300 people a year came through our doors.
We acquired permanent premises at Meadow House, Forest Road E17. Meadow House had dormitory-style accommodation for 35 people on the first floor and a day centre on the ground floor. We provided hot meals and showers for 250-300 street homeless people a year.
In partnership with Christian Action Housing Association and the London Borough of Waltham Forest we secured capital funding under the Places for Change Programme to redevelop the Meadow House site.
We rented temporary premises, ‘Stonelea’ on Lea Bridge Road, during the re-development. The building was provided by the North East London Mental Health Team.
We moved into our purpose-built ‘Branches Hostel’.
Planning, strategy and preparation started for an ambitious project to be able to acquire our own secondary move-on property, for people who are ready to move on from Branches but not yet ready to live independently. Work started as raised capital funding and put firm plans into place.
We secured a suitable property and refurbishment work started with our our new move-on property project, ‘Stepping Stones‘.
Our new move-on property, Stepping Stones, launched and 6 residents from Branches moved in.