What is Liverpool City Council doing in response to Covid 19 and homelessness?
Liverpool City Council continues to be fully committed to delivering services to people who are homeless or threatened with homelessness, however, in order to keep people safe and reduce the spread of Covid 19, it is necessary to make some changes to service delivery.
Housing Options Service: the Housing Options Service is fully operational. Anyone in Liverpool who is at immediate risk of becoming homeless is being urged to contact the council’s Housing Options Team via phone or online. Previously, people looking for advice or support were able to call into the team’s office in St John’s Market for face-to-face assessments, however to limit the spread of coronavirus the public counter has now been closed.
People can refer themselves to Housing Options by calling Careline, the council’s 24/7 social care contact centre, on 0151 233 3800 (Freephone 0800 731 6844). And now a new online form has been launched to make the service even more accessible: https://liverpool.gov.uk/housing/homeless-or-at-risk/housing-options-referral/
Always Room Inside: The 0300 123 2041 phone number and the rough sleepers outreach team are fully operational. If you are concerned about someone sleeping rough, please call this number and the outreach team will respond.
Labre House: During this pandemic, Labre House is not an appropriate place for people to stay as it has shared facilities. Therefore the Council is working with The Whitechapel centre and partners to move everyone out of the service into more suitable accommodation. The hotel and private sector have contributed accommodation to facilitate this. We will be closing on a phased basis from Friday 27th March to Monday 30th March. From Monday 30th March, no one should be directed to Labre House as it will be closed.
As above, if you are concerned about a rough sleeper phone the Always Room Inside Number, or if someone is homeless contact the Housing Options Service.
Rough Sleeping Enablement Centre: Like Labre House, this centre has a lot of shared facilities and from 30th March will be closed. Service users who were previously using the day centre will be encouraged to remain in their accommodation. We do not anticipate anyone who was using the day centre will be without a solution.
Temporary accommodation: Temporary accommodation is operational although referrals are no longer through Mainstay. Anyone who is homeless should be referred to the Housing Options Service via Careline (contact details above).
How are services managing people who are symptomatic or needing to self-isolate?
We have sourced additional temporary accommodation to be able to ensure people can be safely self-isolated as well as to facilitate the closure of Labre House. We will continue to monitor this capacity carefully and will bring on additional accommodation as we need to.
The council is also working closely with health to identify those in temporary accommodation who have underlying health conditions that may make them particularly vulnerable. We will work proactively to ensure those individuals are in the most appropriate accommodation solution.
We have also surveyed all our services to identify their plans to support service users to self-isolate and are working with them to ensure plans are in place. Public Health are closely advising us and we are circulating all the latest guidance to our services.
How do I refer someone who is homeless given the changes?
If the person is homeless or threatened with homeless then refer them to Housing Options by calling Careline, the council’s 24/7 social care contact centre, on 0151 233 3800 (Freephone 0800 731 6844). And now a new online form has been launched to make the service even more accessible: https://liverpool.gov.uk/housing/homeless-or-at-risk/housing-options-referral/
If the person is already rough sleeping, contact the Always Room Inside helpline on 0300 123 2041 and outreach will respond.
