LONGSTOP – LONGER TERM ACCOMMODATION SOLUTION WITH SUPPORT

Hosts offer a private room in their home and shared facilities for young people who cannot return home and do not know how to live on their own. Young people live with a host for up to one year. The young person has their own license agreement with a support plan.

They get intensive support from their Gloucestershire Nightstop support worker and their host. If needed, we help them get back into college, or into work or training. This is fundamental for their future prospects. They learn to budget, pay a contribution to bills, shop for food, cook and clean – everything they will need to live a successful independent life. Depending on the young person’s needs, we arrange help from other agencies, such as mental health services.

For a young person, the stay is a journey. They will often start from a point of anxiety, confusion or even fear. From the safety and stability of their host’s home, they become capable, confident young people who are looking forward to moving on with their lives.

24 hour On-Call service for emergencies, available to both our hosts and Young People.

WHAT OUR YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE TO SAY

Having someone else to talk to and being able to turn to people who understood or might have been in the same situation.

I’ve got my own house now, that I pay for, it’s a house share but I pay around £700 a month, as obviously I’ve got a job now, so I’ve been living there for about five months now, before that I was living with my mates Nan and Grandad, they helped me and I paid them rent. I stayed with them for about six months, but obviously now that I’ve got a job again, a decent job, I can live by myself.

They were very supportive and helped me a lot. They obviously made sure that I had somewhere to stay, and then kept checking in on me to make sure that it was going well with everything

Give it a try because I was like you at the start very scared. But it was great.

They can help more than you think

They can help straight away, support you and they make you feel safe.

Staff are very supportive and treat everyone equally

She was there for me whenever I needed someone to talk to, helped me register with the doctors.

Thank you for all the help, Thank you for all the support

Nightstop helped build my confidence up and helped my self esteem.

When I was homeless, I was in a low place but now I’ve come back kicking and screaming and stronger than I was before

They accepted me into their family, gave me hope as I had nowhere else to go, I will think back on it when I am older as it was the happiest, I felt in 9 years

M did a really good job of making me feel welcome, she made meals for me and was understanding

Could you be a host?

If you have a spare room and want to help young homeless people, you could be a host. We provide full training, support and payments for hosting. 

Get involved

“Nightstop is a community response to a problem which is all too common in our community. This unique service is made possible by the generosity of inspirational people with a spare room and a desire to make a difference in a young person’s life.” 

– Sir Trevor McDonald, President of Depaul UK

WHAT OUR HOSTS HAVE TO SAY

It is an honour to be able to provide an evening or two under my roof for these vulnerable young men. All of my visitors have enriched my understanding. A few have left me feeling uplifted by their visit. One was so full of humour and fun that he raised me out of a black mood. He has since gone on to work as a carer, where I’m sure he is doing a fantastic job.

There’s a very fine line between a young person who is doing ok and a young person who isn’t and it could just pivot on 1 friend or 1 incident and start a downward spiral and it felt like Nightstop was able to interrupt that spiral. 

It’s a really lovely way of giving something back, We’re only doing a teeny tiny bit to help and there’s so many people who need help and it’s a really important thing to do if you have the space to do it. 

It keeps me alive if you know what I mean, It keeps me in touch with what’s going, it forces me to do things I wouldn’t normally do, we go on long walks, we go to concerts, we go to theatres, things in the past I probably wouldn’t have done. 

1st night was quiet, you don’t know the young person and they don’t know you. You get up the next morning and ask them how they slept, how they feel and the one thing that does come across 9 times out of 10 is that “I feel safe.”

I think its a nice thing, quite a few of these young people still keep in touch, so you do have a friend as well, which I think is good.  

It can vary, sometimes they stay for a couple of months, the current young person I have with me now has been with me 2 years and the transformation has been amazing. Has been forced out of their home by their parents ended up sofa sleeping after sleeping rough on the streets so he was very wary of people, so initially it was some what difficult, but as time goes by you get to understand how their mind works and things like. He went from someone who was very antisocial to someone who is now working and will hopefully, in the next couple of months, move on.