Welcome services remain open as normal after incident

At 12.45am on Monday 4th November a vehicle was driven into the front of our Drop-in centre.

We are shocked by the extent of the damage caused to our homeless Drop-in Centre after last night’s incident. This centre provides potentially life-saving services to the homeless population in our city. We are approaching winter, the most challenging season for homeless people and without the Drop-in Centre many of our most vulnerable service users would be at even higher risk than they already are.

However we would like to reassure the public, and in particular the homeless people who depend on our services, that it is business as usual for us and we will continue to operate as normal thanks to the dedication of our wonderful staff and volunteers.

The Drop-in Centre remains open as normal from 8am to 10pm, as it is every day, and will continue to provide free access to food, tea and coffee, showers, laundry facilities, advice on housing, health and benefits to the homeless population in Belfast.

Our 24 hour winter outreach programme will also continue to operate as normal. Our Outreach service will be out on the streets of Belfast 24 hours a day and our 2nd Outreach Van will also be operating from 8pm - 8am.

The Outreach Teams will provide support to homeless people and rough sleepers and the 2nd van will enable us to cover the whole of the Belfast area and not just the city centre.

Anyone who has very generously collected items from our donation appeal or raised money for The Welcome Organisation can still bring it to our Drop-in Centre as normal.

We plan to have the damage to the Drop-in repaired by Christmas and we will continue with our preparations to give the homeless people of Belfast a warm, safe and festive Christmas.

We would like to thank the public for your continued and vital support without which we couldn’t deliver the level of services we do for people affected by homelessness in Belfast.

We would encourage anyone who has any information about last night’s incident to contact the PSNI.