Who We Are

St Petrock’s is an Exeter based charity which aims to support and encourage people who are homeless or inadequately housed to improve their circumstances and to take more control of their lives. The charity has been working with the homeless since 1994 and provides a place of warmth and acceptance and a link between street life, loneliness and a better future. St Petrock’s employs 12 paid staff, has a board of eleven trustees and benefits from the services of some 30 volunteers. The cost of running St Petrock’s is approximately £300,000 a year.

In the last three years to March 2008 we worked with over 1700 clients, provided 3900 keyworking sessions, helped 593 people into accommodation, 142 into full-time or part-time employment, education or volunteering, and saw 1774 ex-prisoners resettled.

Approximately 25% of our income is received through donations from the local community in addition to gifts and volunteering - in 2007/08 around 400 hours were provided to the project.

Mission and aims

St Petrock’s believes that people who are severely disadvantaged should be empowered to achieve control over their lives and maximise their opportunities to receive independence. Our clients fall mainly into three groups:

• Rough sleepers who have no accommodation – the street homeless
• People who have a roof over their heads (sleeping on friend’s floors, in hostels, bed and breakfast accommodation etc.), but have not got a home and are not settled
• People who are at risk of homelessness

Our clients typically have overlapping needs in addition to a lack of accommodation:

• 86% have complex needs i.e. mental health and/or addiction issues
• 65% have experienced some kind of family breakdown, over 20% have been in care
• 53% are ex-offenders
• Over 90% have left school early with few or no qualifications

Our specific aims are:

• To improve personal responsibility, motivation and self worth
• To enable clients to reduce drug/alcohol use
• To enable clients to manage their physical/mental health
• To improve clients’ life, basic and vocational skills
• To enable clients to access housing and successfully maintain a tenancy
• To create awareness of homelessness issues, aiming at prevention

Tackling the long-term disadvantage experienced by this group of people will mean engaging a whole range of different strategies for supporting them back into healthier and more sustainable lifestyles. St Petrock’s operates to this end in a number of ways. These are treated below as though they were discrete enterprises, but clearly they overlap in many ways, and one of the major strengths of St Petrock’s is its ability to adapt to the individual needs of people many of whose lives are for the time being chaotic.

1. Life skills training
2. Improving literacy and numeracy skills
3. Provision of work, work placement and volunteering opportunities
4. Prison resettlement (in collaboration with HMP Exeter)
5. Schools and young people outreach
6. Support for clients who obtain accommodation
7. Family reconciliation (where family disputes are contributing to homelessness)
8. Advice and referral services
9. Provision of befriending, mentoring and volunteering opportunities
10. Provision of basic survival services
11. Maintaining a ‘hub’ for providers of health services (in collaboration with the PCT)

St Petrock’s is, therefore, much more than a traditional day centre. It offers a resource, activity and training centre for people who are homeless, aiming at helping them rebuild their lives.

Funded By