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Homeless get skills boost from Cumbrian charity

by Jacob Colley
19/08/2021
in News
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Manna House chief officer Andrea Aldridge
Manna House chief officer Andrea Aldridge

A Cumbrian charity’s workshops to improve the skills of homeless people have proved to be a lifeline to dozens of people in the Kendal area.

Manna House, in Kendal, provides support for people throughout South Lakeland, from its centre in Ann Street and has managed to remain open for the majority of the crisis.

This includes drop-in sessions where people can get advice on issues including housing and benefits, as well as Wednesday Workshops and Skills Cafes covering subjects such as cooking, creative writing and the arts.

“We do all sorts of things that are designed to promote literacy and numeracy,” says chief officer Andrea Aldridge.

“There’s a lot of client support work that goes on, where people are helped to access different services for their mental health, for addictions, for their health problems. We have a shower facility, we get people housed and support them to get clothing and food.”

Plethora of issues

Andrea says high house prices, difficulty accessing work and relatively low wages compared to the cost of living all contribute to the issue of homelessness in the area.

This combined with universal issues such as drug dependency or mental health problems.

“There’s people who have had a very poor start in life, who find it really difficult to form and make relationships and they lead chaotic lifestyles,” said Andrea.

“In Kendal, that’s just as prevalent as anywhere else.”

During the pandemic, Manna House had to adapt in a number of ways, for example by holding sessions for clients outside.

Support offered

It has also distributed food and vouchers to people who have been affected financially.

The organisation was helped in its mission by a £3,000 donation from The Cumberland Building Society, distributed via Cumbria Community Foundation, which funded more than 40 workshops supporting around 50 people.

“We’re always having to fundraise, it’s a never-ending job,” said Andrea.

“We really value funders like The Cumberland who are supporting us to do our job properly. The Wednesday Workshops and the whole skills programme is really about making everything we do a learning opportunity and that aspect of our organisation is really important.

“In everything we do we want to support people to live more autonomous, secure lives, and that sometimes means working on things like confidence, or really basic competencies which you might take for granted like reading and writing or numeracy, working on the computer or even saying ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’ or waiting your turn to speak.

“All the learning opportunities are structured around teaching those kinds of very basic social skills to make people more aware of how to fit in.”

Becky Towns, CSR and communications executive for The Cumberland, said: “Our focus is always on doing our best to help our customers and communities in any way we can.

“Manna House has been doing vital work in South Lakeland for years and this has only become more important during the pandemic. We’re proud to do what we can to support them.”

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