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About St Wilfrid's

St Wilfrids Centre supports the homeless, vulnerable and socially excluded.

The parish church of St Wilfrid and its associated school were bombed during the second world war. In 1990 it was decided to renovate the buildings and create a drop-in day centre for the homeless. In 1991, St Wilfrid’s Drop-in Day Centre was opened in the old presbytery. This soon became too small and the project extended into the old church. In 2006 to reflect the expanding scope of the Centre, the name was changed to St Wilfrid’s Centre. Whilst the Centre is affiliated to the Diocese of Hallam, apart from rent free use of the buildings the Diocese provides no financial support whatsoever. The Centre is completely independent and autonomous with its own Management Committee and Trustees.

Although the facilities seem small from the outside, the old church is a very large building over 3 floors with a main community hall, a range of dedicated training and interview rooms, kitchens, café, showers, laundry and large skills workshops fitted out for woodcrafts and pottery. We run our services with only 12 salaried staff but an amazing bank of 100 regular volunteers some of whom have been with us for 15 years. In 2005 we acquired our own allotment which has been a huge success, is now an important part of our work and provides fresh produce for the kitchens.

We work with men and women (at a ratio of around 75:25) broadly described as “vulnerable”. This means that some people who come to us are homeless or are likely to have accommodation that they are struggling to manage. Mental health problems affect a significant number here; caused by abuse, mild spectrum disorders, loneliness or just the basic inability to cope with day to day living in our society. Over the past 3 years we have gradually adapted the focus of St Wilfrid’s away from the strict day centre model to a more holistic approach as we now find that at any one time around 70% of our clients are coping with mental health issues and will not engage with other providers. Many struggle with lifeskills and literacy and many cannot cope with structure. If we were not here for them, they simply would not go anywhere else. We give practical support to overcome barriers of social exclusion particularly for those with high support needs often shunned by other agencies.

Our services contribute to a raft of local strategies including Mental Health Strategy, Supporting People, Homelessness Strategy, Health Improvement Programme, Sheffield First for Community Safety and Sheffield First for Inclusion - Social Inclusion Strategy. We work in partnership with Sheffield City Council who give us a core grant each year and with the Primary Care Trust who allocate a small part of the mental health budget to us.

We operate a 'closed door' policy in order to protect our vulnerable clients. Clients who ‘drop-in’ are interviewed before admission whilst formal referrals come from social workers, mental health teams, psychiatrists, community psychiatric nurses (CPN's) and GP’s. We are probably the only Centre in the North of England offering services from basic welfare through personal development and education to support for ‘move-on’. We aim to address the basic needs of excluded people and then help them to live with independence, self esteem and dignity. Whilst we do see people recovering from alcohol or substance abuse, St Wilfrid’s operates as a dry centre.

We provide our services for those who are marginalized and socially excluded in Sheffield/South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire, as well as transient individuals who travel from town to town. The Centre provides a full day centre opportunity for adults (18 to 60+) and is open to clients from 10am to 4pm each weekday and on average 70-80 men and women use the Centre each day. Since the Project began in 1991, there have been over 240,000 individual visits to use our facilities. In 2007 alone over 600 clients sought our help. Around 50% of our clients are repeat users, and 75% are men.
We provide 44,000 hot and cold meals and snacks each year served in our fully equipped Cafe and Dining Room. As well as donated and bought food, the Centre's kitchens also use fresh produce grown on our own allotment and we pour in excess of 113,000 cups of tea and coffee each year. To support the small staff team, our 100 volunteers each regularly give one session per week. Just to run the all-day Cafe, we are given 60 volunteer hours each week.

190 clients regularly use our basic hygiene services - showers, hairdressing, laundry, clothing repair and clothing bank. We provide access to supported medical and dental services, advice and advocacy including benefit, housing and personal advice and we run a Credit Union to help regular clients with their finances.

Most clients are aged 36-60 (78%) reflecting the core service users at the Centre. Although most would record their origins as White UK, just under 20% are from a wide range of other backgrounds – Polish, Iranian, Irish, Asian, Israeli, Latvian and Iraqi, economic and political refugees. We work closely with organisations that support Asylum Seekers and when necessary have access to local interpreters although the mix of clients at the Centre often means that we can find an interpreter amongst the men and women already using our services. We deliberately make our Centre a safe and calm place.

With a few tentative links already, we would like to extend our services to the local Muslim communities, but many usually eschew all such services, sometimes because they are fearful of not being accepted, and sometimes because they try to avoid the stigma of mental illness. However, at St Wilfrids, we are clear that irrespective of background, all vulnerable people will receive appropriate care.