Free-Wheeling for the Outreach Plus Team!

A few months ago it was suggested that we reach out to Beryl, the providers of Watford’s bike-share scheme, as they had a community initiative seeking to support local groups supporting their local area.

For people currently sleeping outdoors, New Hope’s Outreach Plus team go out daily to connect with people wherever they may be sleeping and establish their needs. As well as providing humanitarian aid such as food, clothes and rapid access to crisis accommodation, the Outreach Plus team maintain regular contact with people not yet ready to engage with homelessness support services to build trusting relationships that may lead to them accessing longer-term support in the future. As the Outreach Plus team were already making use of the bikes in emergencies, Beryl kindly gave us vouchers for free usage of their bikes to respond rapidly to reports of rough sleeping. This partnership with Beryl has now been supporting our Outreach Plus team for some time in providing green transport for quickly responding to the needs of people sleeping rough in and around Watford.

“We often use the bikes to cover more area in a shorter space of time. They’ve enabled us to respond to StreetLink reports and phone calls so much quicker than before and we have utilised them to go straight to a rough sleeper, meet with them and then bring them back to an Outreach bed. The Beryl bikes have really been fundamental to our outreach. It has allowed us to travel twice the distance in half the time. Covering more ground has been very useful and positive especially during our monthly counts, reaching new distances and areas that were once hard to reach.”

Steve – Outreach Plus manager