Patrick's Story

Patrick’s story is a great example of how our Advice Team help a variety of different vulnerable people with a wide range of issues.

Patrick is a 50-year-old gentleman who originally came from abroad. Patrick was asleep on one of the benches in St Peter’s Gardens, which is the park outside the Parish Church directly opposite the Mission. One of our Advice Officers, Amy, was made aware of him being there and went across the road to see him. She woke him up and invited him to come over to the Mission to get warm and to have some food. Patrick accepted happily and came over with Amy to enjoy a free breakfast in our lovely café.

Amy then assessed that the best course of action would be for Patrick to meet with members of the Council Rough Sleepers initiative, which he did later that morning in a private room at the Mission. The Rough Sleepers Team managed to establish that Patrick was homeless; sleeping rough after losing his job in catering which came with accommodation included. People often find themselves in this kind of situation through no fault of their own and have no one to turn to. This is just one example of when the Mission can help.

The Rough Sleepers Team managed to find Patrick temporary accommodation in a Bed and Breakfast whilst he started making a claim for benefits and the Council established his eligibility for Housing within the Kirklees area.

Patrick has since returned to the Mission on numerous occasions for free meals and to get warm, just two of the reasons our work is so important to vulnerable people in the Huddersfield area. Patrick has also been referred by our Advice Team to the Welcome Centre to receive food parcels and other essentials while his benefits claim is being processed.

During his visits to the Mission, Patrick was advised of some of the other services we offer including different activities, health and wellbeing services and the Freestyle clothing shop which offers customers the chance to choose their own clothes free of charge – invaluable for those customers who can’t afford to buy warm clothes in the colder weather.

Patrick’s story is not an unusual one – ending up homeless is something that can happen to anyone and is an incredibly difficult problem to resolve when you might be suffering from mental health problems, have a limited understanding of the system and for people that English is not a first language.  Here at the Mission we often help vulnerable people from all of these groups.

We are currently experiencing incredibly high demand for our services and we are preparing for an extremely busy Winter as a result of the cost of living crisis.  If you would like to donate to support our vital work and help the vulnerable people like Patrick who use our service, you can do so here.