Medway Cyrenians, What We Are About

Medway Cyrenians is a secular registered charity, limited by guarantee, whose object, aims and principal activities are to provide accommodation and support to single homeless people in the Medway towns and the surrounding area.

In order to be eligible for Medway Cyrenians support, an applicant must be a single, homeless person aged sixteen years plus with support needs. People come to Medway Cyrenians with an obvious need for accommodation, but this often masks other underlying needs, including emotional, psychological and/or mental health difficulties, drug or alcohol issues, poor physical health and/or a low level of basic skills. This multiplicity of need makes independent living harder to achieve and maintain than for most. Medway Cyrenians aims to identify the needs of each individual and work with them towards becoming active and engaged citizens in the community.

The charity provides four accommodation-based services and an outreach service to a maximum of 48 clients at any one time. There are always more people trying to access the services than can be supported. Clients are referred via statutory agencies, other voluntary organisations or crucially, they can approach the charity direct. In recent times, the charity has undergone a step-change in service delivery that has resulted in a professional paid staff team, rather than the previous model of live-in volunteers. A unique characteristic of Medway Cyrenians is its use of a pathways model of service delivery, such that clients can ‘try out’ increasing levels of independence with the option to return to higher support projects if they find themselves struggling with the challenges of their new responsibilities. Medway Cyrenians believe that this pathways model reduces incidents of repeat homelessness as clients who return to higher levels of support are not deemed to have ‘failed’ but to have helped themselves avoid a further period homelessness brought on by eviction or abandonment.

Charity no. 1037970
Company no. 2897827