Start-Up
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What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. James 2:14-17 |
At Holy Trinity, we help in the fight against homelessness by supporting Start-Up, a Stirling-based Christian charity that provides starter packs of food and household goods for people who've been newly allocated accommodation. The packs, made up from donated goods or goods bought with cash gifts, provide the basics required to start turning a house into a home.
New or nearly new electrical goods can now be donated to the Bridge Project, who have means of testing them for safety (most charity shops reject them). For further information, please e-mail quarriers@stirling.gov.uk or call Kate Sharkey on 01786 448633. The Bridge Project is a youth housing partnership between Stirling Council Homelessness Service and the young people's charity Quarriers. For details of other organisations that accept electrical goods, furniture and other household items, please follow this link.
Start-Up are also exploring various ways of enabling some of the recipients of donated goods to help as volunteers with the project.
For thoughts on homelessness in Stirling, please see the Rector's Sermon for Homelessness Sunday, given on 29 January 2006.
Background to homelessness in Stirling
Official statistics give an idea of the extent of homelessness in Stirling:
- In 2004-05, 1,037 individual households made applications to Stirling Council under the Homeless Persons legislation. There were 1,130 applications in total during the period, 27% more than in 2003-04. This compared with an overall national average of only 1% more. There was wide fluctuation: Moray (54%), North Lanarkshire (27%) and Stirling (27%) showed the highest increases, with Glasgow City (-16%), Shetland (-15%) and East Dunbartonshire (-14%) showing the biggest decreases.
- Twelve per cent of households applying to Stirling Council in 2004-05 applied more than once in a 12-month period.
- Throughout Scotland, single-person households accounted for 79% of households applying more than once in the period 2004-05.
- In Stirling in 2004-05, the majority of applications were for single-person households (71%), mainly men. Single parents, predominantly women, accounted for the next largest group (23%).
- Throughout Scotland, the main reasons given for applying as homeless were loss of accommodation with relatives or friends (35%) and disputes within the household (23%). Single people and couples without children were more likely to give the former reason, while over two fifths of female single parent households gave disputes within the household as the main reason.
Locally, Stirling Council's Homelessness Service works in partnership with Quarriers in trying to prevent young people from becoming established in a homeless lifestyle. Much of this work is done in schools.
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