Supporting Homelessness this Christmas
Social distancing means we’ll all be spending Christmas differently this year. But for those living homeless, their year of loneliness and isolation continues throughout Christmas, making it a very hard end of the year. In the spirit of a Crisis Christmas, we'll be donating funds to help the charity Crisis look after as many people during the Christmas period.
Crisis Christmas in 2020
Each year, Crisis supports thousands of people who are homeless. Treating people with care and respect, they provide a warm christmas welcome, hot food and emotional and well-being support. This can be life-changing for people.
Last year we raised £400 for Crisis, can you help us double it this year? For every Keyworker Pamper Box sold, we will be donating £5 to Crisis. Of course. you can donate directly to the Crisis Christmas appeal too.
Why does KiteNest care about homelessness?
Over 280,000 people were homeless in England as of December Selter has reported. In Wales, 405 people slept rough across the country between October 14 and 27 2019 in their last annual rough sleeping count.
And while Scotland doesn’t use the same method as England and Wales, the Scottish Household Survey data suggests 5,300 adults sleep rough at least once per year in Scotland, estimating just over 700 people bedding down on the streets in a single night.
We find these statistics startling and want to use our platforms and channels over Christmas to raise awareness of this situation. We also want to use our busiest time of sales to generate funds for Crisis to continue lobbying the government for stronger protection and funding for homelessness and to help provide hot meals and a safe bed over Christmas.
Children are at risk too
A new study has found that one in every 103 children in the UK will be homeless this Christmas, further revealing the actual scale of the country’s housing crisis.
There are more than 131,000 children who are homeless - up by 50,000 than five years ago. This means that an average school in Britain now includes five homeless children, with it increasing up to 28 homeless children for every school in London, where the crisis is at its worst.
Crisis estimates 9,500 children will spend Christmas Day in a hostel or bed and breakfast - showing the staggering scale of the problem of children sleeping rough and living in insecure temporary accommodation.
Covid and homelessness
People experiencing homelessness, particularly those who are rough sleeping, are especially vulnerable to the COVID outbreak. Crisis reports that they are three times more likely to experience a chronic health condition including asthma and COPD. It is therefore vital that we recognise the importance of classing the homelessness as a vulnerable group for the purposes of government planning and priority of donations.
Despite the Public Health England’s information on COVID-19 for hostel or day centre providers, low percentages are actually being provided with self-contained accommodation, meaning they are unable to self-isolate. And with more and more people experiencing financial hardship, they could be left facing homelessness as a result of the impact of COVID-19.
Thank you
We really appreciate you taking the time out to read this. Hopefully we can treat as many loved ones to a special pamper box of ethical and zero waste goodies, all while raising funds for those most in need. So that's £10 of free goodies in your box AND a £5 donation to Crisis.
Our £5 donation to Crisis for every Keyworker pamper box sold is running between 20th November - 20th December, 2020.