Dear all,

In our previous email we highlighted work done by churches in the Bridgend and Newport areas. Today we cover work being done in the Wrexham area.

Wrexham churches and housing / homelessness

1. Wrexham Feeding the Roofless (WFTR) is a church-led service that started in 2005, providing sandwiches, meals and hot drinks at an agreed feeding point in town.
   
   Initially, using volunteers from five churches, the service was available on Saturdays and Sundays but now, with eleven churches involved, Bank Holidays and the period between Christmas and New Year are also covered, with plans afoot to provide food on Thursday evenings as well.
   
   Over 370 separate individuals were provided with food through 2010. Services are provided for other days of the week by other secular agencies.
   
   For further information contact Geraint Owens on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   
2. Churches are represented through Wrexham Feeding the Roofless at the informal "Tier Two" committee. This grouping brings together workers from agencies, both statutory (NHS, local authority etc) and voluntary sector (e.g. CAIS, The Wallich, AVOW), that support the homeless and substance abusers in Wrexham.
   
   Through Tier Two, day-to-day issues regarding the homeless are discussed, ensuring better coordination of services and information-sharing. Present day plans for a day centre in Wrexham arose from initial discussions in this forum.
   
   For further information contact Geraint Owens on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   
3. The Salvation Army Citadel provides a drop-in on Thursday mornings, staffed by them and volunteers from other Wrexham churches. They offer a free, cooked breakfast to anyone who comes in, and also offer lunch packs and give out clothing.
   
   The Thursday morning drop-ins are also used by other agencies, such as The Wallich (who offer a range of services including housing advice and counselling), the NHS (Health Visitors) & The Elms (NHS Drug & Alcohol service).
   
   Staff from the council's info shop also raise awareness about the services that their shop has to offer, including free internet.
   
   For further information, contact Karen Edwards on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   
   Thursday drop-in statistics (January to June 2011):
   
   
   • Average weekly attendance: 40
   • Total number of people attending: 779
     
4. The Salvation Army Citadel is also open five days a week, from Monday to Friday, to give out meals, food parcels and sleeping bags to those who come in who are in need.
   
   For further information, contact Karen Edwards on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   Food parcels given out to homeless people or people/families on low income (January to June 2011): 187.
5. Wrexham Methodist Church on Regent Street runs the drop-in Just Across at the church on Thursdays between 10.30 and 2.30 as a place of welcome for one and all.
   
   There is table tennis, pool, sewing classes, conversational English classes and freshly baked bread to eat (at 1pm). Among the many visitors are refugees and asylum seekers, with health visitors present to offer advice and support to them and others.
   
   For further information, contact Biddy Crossfield on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   
6. Wrexham Street Pastors (the first one in Wales) has been in operation since 2006, with a team of four patrolling the streets of Wrexham town centre every Saturday night and two Fridays in every month.
   
   Over the last 12-18 months the teams have noticed an increase in the number of roofless people / rough sleepers that they meet in the night-time economy (both local and Eastern European people, but with more of the latter).
   
   When Street Pastors began in 2006, it was unknown for them to meet homeless people in the town centre as they were made to feel unwelcome by some locals and would suffer abuse. It is a sign of homeless people's increasing desperation that they are now to be found in the town centre, with Street Pastors coming across them on at least four of the six patrols they do every month.
   
   For further information, contact Gareth Jones on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   
7. The Church in Wales has 11 almshouses in the borough - five from the 17th century, four Victorian and two modern - and they offer accommodation in them, trying to cater for the most vulnerable and for those who don't fit council criteria.
   
   For further information, contact Rev. Mike Harrison on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
   
8. Together Creating Communities (TCC) is a broad based coalition of churches and members of community groups and people of other faiths who share common values in trying to achieve justice. The number of churches that are members is 21 out of a total membership of almost 40 organisations.
   
   Wrexham's night shelter for the roofless, Ty· Nos, established in 2008 and run by Clwyd Alyn, was a direct result of the campaigning work of TCC.
   
   For more information on the work of TCC or on this story, contact Rev. Mike Harrison on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
9. Mission Wrexham is an informal, inter-denominational network that began in 1996, and is the network that has given rise to Street Pastors in Wrexham and to Wrexham Feeding the Roofless.
   
   For further information contact Art Ellinson on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Comment

In Wrexham County Borough Council, we see churches with a strong recent history of working well together, with this unity greatly facilitating the work that they are doing among the homeless.

Christians in Wrexham will often refer to the homeless as "the roofless", a "dialect" word that has come into use through the popularity of the Wrexham Feeding the Roofless initiative.

Staff from secular agencies make use of both of the drop-ins included in this document, provided by the Salvation Army Citadel and Wrexham Methodist Church, in order to gain access to and to offer support to potential or existing clients. This is a sometimes forgotten service that churches provide and, through the convenient location of their buildings, their long-term presence and the trust they have with hard-to-reach communities, they are well-equipped to do so.

Gweini's 2008 Faith in Wales - counting for communities report provided, for the first time, a monetary figure for the contribution that Christians and other faith communities were making to civil society in Wales, conservatively estimated at £102m pa at 2008 prices.

While this excellent report was well received, today's snapshot of Wrexham church work among the homeless highlights the challenges that lie ahead in order to adequately capture the work of churches and faith groups in the future. Whereas Faith in Wales focused solely on initiatives being carried out through churches, chapels, mosques, synagogues, temples etc., other significant contributions, such as Street Pastors and foodbanks (found in other locations throughout Wales), would not have been fully included in the data.

Finally, this snapshot of Wrexham churches' work among the homeless is important in light of the negative criticism that Christians sometimes receive in the press. Trevor Phillips, for example, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, recently intimated that Christians were not successfully integrating into British society, citing examples of what he saw as Christian fundamentalism in the news.

While Trevor Phillips may disagree with Christians' positions on these occasions, he must place these examples alongside the widely-praised work being done by Christians in communities throughout the UK before commenting on Christianity as a whole. The inclusion in this document of the Christian contribution to Together Creating Communities (TCC) also shows that Christians are often active, making a significant contribution and integrating into society but where this work is often hidden.

Please email me on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it with any thoughts or comments. To follow me on twitter, I'm @jimthejukebox