About Nightstop
South Ayrshire Nightstop is affiliated to Nightstop UK and in partnership with Quarriers.
South Ayrshire Nightstop’s Management committee has been operating since 2004 after a need for emergency accommodation in South Ayrshire was identified.
The Management Committee entered into a service agreement with Quarriers who act as the Umbrella Organisation under which South Ayrshire Nightstop operates. A range of funding was then secured which enabled the committee to recruit the Development Co-ordinator who has been developing the service since January 2007.
Nightstop Offers young homeless people 16 to 25 years old emergency accommodation in the homes of approved and trained volunteers for one night at a time.
Scottish Churches Housing Action through their Churches Homelessness Initiative’s Programme (CHIP) provided support and advice to the steering group to establish a Nightstop service in South Ayrshire. CHIP provided dedicated time over a two year period to establish a local service.
Support included mobilising and assisting the steering group to work up a sustainable development plan, attend monthly steering group meetings providing administrative support, assist in formalising the management committee, assist in formalising a workable constitution and achieve charitable status, scope and identify a partner organisation, formalising a partnership arrangement with Quarriers and seed corn funding for getting started.
South Ayrshire Nightstop is the second Nightstop scheme affiliated to Nightstop UK in Scotland. However there are over 45 schemes throughout Britain offering this free service to young people with more schemes in development.
Nightstop have provided 60,000 nights of accommodation to 30,000 young people since the first scheme in Leeds took up referrals in 1987 this figure increases each and every night.
If you have a spare room in your home and are willing to undertake an Enhanced Disclosure check, provide us with the names of two references and are able to commit to several sessions of training we would love to hear from you. Hosts are ordinary people. They come to hosting from a range of perspectives. Hosts find hosting satisfying and describe their role as making a difference to vulnerable young people without really doing very much. Hosts are very well supported by our paid staff and receive out of pocket expenses, full initial training and up dated training. SA Nightstop recruit volunteers Pan Ayrshire. However our referrals at present are only from young people from the South Ayrshire area.
Please see our news and events page for details of forthcoming training sessions as this will give you an idea of how we support hosts. Host also receive a Volunteers development plan which is tailored to suit each volunteer and supervision at times appropriate to them. Maybe you feel unable to host but would like to be a volunteer driver or get involved with our management committee. Again full Enhanced Disclosure and two references, initial training is needed. Please see our volunteers page for more details.
