Press Release December 2nd

Hot meals and homeless services extended

Crosscare staff and volunteers are working hard to provide essential services to those most in need in Dublin during this cold weather and have increased the number of hot meals available and extended opening hours in their homeless shelters.
 
Their three food centres based at Holles Row, Portland Row and Longford Lane are open this morning from 10am letting people who may be homeless or isolated in out of the cold with fresh soup and rolls until their dinner is prepared for midday.  Over 300 people received hot meal from Crosscare yesterday.
 
Noel Clarke the Manager at one of these centres said “we’re at capacity but so far we haven’t needed to turn anyone away and hopefully we won’t, we will do everything possible to feed all that come to our door.
 
For those people in the in the local city areas that cannot make it to the food centres Crosscare’s Meals on Wheels service has been extended and now is providing 220 meals a day to people in their homes, which is double what would normally be provided. Yesterday volunteers went to homes on foot, when transport was not available.
 
The three Crosscare  homeless shelters run in the city are also extending their hours, normally doors would open at 10pm and people would need to leave at 9am the following morning but sending people with nowhere to go out into this weather was just not right so the staff agreed to extend service which now open at 5pm, provides people with a warm meal and a safe place to stay, provides all that need them with winter clothing, scarves, hats gloves and then stays open until 11:30am the following morning.
 
Keith Vaughan manager of one of our Homeless Centres said “the staff have extended their shifts and met the increasing demand.  We still don’t like asking people to leave shelters at 11:30 but we need to prepare the facility for that evening and at 11:30 most of our clients would head over to one of the Crosscare food centres so at least we know they have somewhere to go.”
 
Crosscare are monitoring the situation in the city daily and trying daily to develop services to meet extra needs at this difficult time.  Crosscare an Agency of the Archdiocese of Dublin
 
Further information from Michael McDonagh, Crosscare (0876710442) or go to www.crosscare.ie