Cornerstone Day Centre

Background

Cornerstone Day Centre offers cooked meals, showers, haircuts, and good as new clothing to alcohol abusers, as well as drug abusers, recovering mentally ill people and socially isolated people.

The centre is about two kilometres from Manchester city centre (in the south west sector of inner city Manchester).

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

The aim of the centre is to bring people off the street, feed them and assist them with dignity during their recovery.

What local organisations are involved?

We receive support from Housing Outreach and Direct Access Support. Probation staff and a range of professionals use Cornerstone as a contact centre. Officers from the local authority’s Homeless Persons Service use Cornerstone facilities to contact, interview and assess street homeless candidates and others with no settled address.

How many people are running this project and who are they?

The centre is run by the Catholic Welfare Societies (Diocese of Salford) Ltd. There are eight paid staff and many volunteers.

What local population are you targeting?

We target homeless and otherwise marginalised adults over 18 years of age.

How many people are you targeting?

Between 175 and 200 people attend the centre each weekday.

Interventions

What interventions are you using to address the problem?

Cornerstone Day Centre offers cooked meals, showers, haircuts, and good as new clothing to the target group.

Is the project design based on evidence? If so, please state reference.

The trigger for the Cornerstone project was the number of homeless persons approaching our presbyteries and convents requesting food or drink or the money to purchase them.

Outcome

What outcomes or planned outcomes are you measuring?

We aim to mitigate the effect of street homelessness, promote health, encourage clients to address addiction and addictive behaviours, and facilitate access to statutory services. In the statutory sector a day centre serving up to 200 clients each day would cost upwards of £500 000. With less than one third of that amount coming into our coffers we are forced to prioritise and it is the ‘back office’ function which is underdeveloped. We record data on outputs, but in respect of outcomes we are limited to anecdotal evidence and the powerful testimony of a growing number of clients.

Do you have any outcomes or results yet? If so, what are they?

A steady stream of clients move into settled housing, rehabilitation centres and even occasionally return to the labour market. We estimate that in addition to the tenancies secured by the specialist housing officers referred to above, Cornerstone staff secure a further 30 tenancies per annum in the social housing and private sector.

Our Annual Report is available on request.

Is your project relevant to a government target or guideline?

No particular Government policy, but our project supports crime reduction strategies, promotes sensible drinking and is part of community safety networks and anti-drugs policies.

Feedback

What obstacles did you have to overcome to set up this project?

• The absence not only of statutory funding but of official involvement in the set-up period;
• The continuing lack of official funding to assist with recording revenue; and
• The initial hostility of our neighbours to the location of the centre.

What have you learned about the project so far?

The project is very simple, delivering advice on healthy eating, personal hygiene, enhancing self-image, and providing access to helping agencies, such as housing, social services and benefits agencies.

What would you do differently?

We have learned as much from our mistakes as we have from the things we’ve managed to get right; such logic suggests that we’d have done very little differently. Perhaps now we know the extent of the demand, we’d have sought larger premises and, given the wear and tear imposed on our building by over 200 visitors every day, a building made from more robust materials.