Charities join forces to help end homelessness in Calderdale

Happydays, which provides safe accommodation, routine, structured volunteering, and employability skills will join forces with Christians Together Calderdale (CTC) which operates our of The Gathering Place (TGP) on St James’s Road.

Whilst Happy Days and CTC will remain separate charities, we will operate with a unified leadership team, with each others trustees being appointed onto each others boards.

Gareth Henderson, currently Chairman of Happydays will become Chairman of both charities. Dawn Walker who has been chair of CTC for the last eight years will remain a trustee of CTC and become a new Trustee of Happydays.

Both charities serve several hundred of the most vulnerable and marginalised people in Calderdale. They tend to be socially excluded and find it hard to access, or they fall out of mainstream support services, who in turn, struggle to reach or maintain contact with this group of people.

Happydays currently have residents that have come through The Gathering Place and are now living a life of abstinence as active members of the local community, demonstrating the natural affinity between the organisations and their visions.

David Fawcett, CEO of Happydays, was instrumental in setting up both charities and believes joining forces will make all their services more effective, creating better long-term outcomes for people experiencing food poverty and homelessness.

Dawn Walker said: "Partnership and collaboration across multiple agencies and organisations is a better way to support the growing needs in our community, particularly as we face tough economic years ahead. Joining forces with Happydays will strengthen our organisation and help us stretch into this new season.

"Working together and in continued strong collaboration with other local agencies and charities, we are able to combine our strengths to provide stronger, comprehensive and better connected services. Together we will help our clients live healthier, safer and more fulfilled lives from the moment they come off the streets, through to them living independently. Together we are able to consider prevention strategies and together we can plan strategically to meet the evolving needs of people who rely on its services, giving the best possible chance of ending homelessness completely."

CTC has operated a winter homeless shelter for over 10 years and with the support of Calderdale Council and The National Lottery and in recent years it has been able to extend this service to be open 24/7 during October to March.

The Gathering Place has recently undergone a £200,000 redevelopment to convert the basement accommodation into eight individual self-contained units which vastly improves the opportunity to provide all year round accommodation in the future.

CTC enjoys support from a strong network of local churches, businesses, individual donators and supermarkets in order to provide weekly food banks for families and individual clients, emergency food parcels and it also provides free community meals three days per week in their dining room, all year round. In strong collaboration with The Basement Project, Calderdale Recovery Steps and other local agencies and charities, CTC also provides advice on housing, benefits, finance, addiction and recovery and with NHS Nurses it provides twice weekly nursing and mental health clinics.

Post the COVID restrictions, TGP is looking forward to resuming faith based projects and church services which brings together our clients and the broader Calderdale community together.

The development of services at the Gathering Place has been supported by the commitment and generosity of Calderdale Council, Housing Justice, Calderdale Smartmove, Calderdale Recovery Steps, Horton Housing, The Basement Project, Streetreach, Ryburn Housing, Craven Mount, Public health and Calderdale homelessness services.

David’s mission to help the homeless started in earnest back in 2008 when he set up the food bank that now runs from the Ebenezer Church. He realized that the food bank was being used by the homeless and started to think about what else could be done to help. In 2010 he created the Inn Churches project, which housed homeless people in churches across the region, firstly at weekends and then seven days a week.

David founded Happydays to provide longer term housing and rehabilitation along with volunteering and employment opportunities, to help people who were accessing the Gathering Place to rebuild their lives. He and the Happydays team have always worked closely with the Gathering Place and joining forces is a natural next step.

Louise Wyatt, currently Happydays’ Head of Communities, also has a history with the Gathering Place and ran it for two years before joining the Happydays team. She will be part of the unified leadership team along with Ellen Boothe, Head of Operations at Happydays, and Angela Keenan, Happydays’ Head of Income and Fundraising.

The unified board will be led by Gareth Henderson, currently Chairman of Happydays, with treasurer Glynis Boocock and trustees Kevin Teague, Carol Stephenson and Rosi Gemmell from the Happydays board with Dawn Walker, Paul McMahon and Hal Clarkson from Christians Together Calderdale. They will be supported by chaplain Trevor Lloyd.