Whitworth House: campaigners to beg for stay of execution for women's hostel

Campaigners trying to save a women’s hostel in the city will ask for a one year stay of execution from the county council if funds can’t be found to keep it open.

The fate of Whitworth House hostel - where a dozen vulnerable young women currently live - looks set to be decided at a county council Children and Young Persons committee meeting later this month

Officers have recommended that councillors refuse to renew the hostel’s funding of £65k per year.

This follows a spending review which revealed the authority must find £680,000 in savings to balance the housing related support budget.

Dr Ruth Jackson, Chair of the Whitworth Trust, said: “The hope is that we at least get an extension of a year. As a group, we have made that recommendation ourselves to say that it would make an awful lot of difference to the future of the house.

“If the recommendation from the county is that they do really want to cut the funding, then a buffer period of a year would help us look at several other options to keep the house open, such as remodelling the service so that it doesn’t take as much public money, or downscaling or looking into corporate sponsorship. But without any time we can’t do that.”

At the moment, Whitworth House receives £65k per year in county council funding to pay for staff. Without this money, owners Orwell Housing cannot afford to keep the hostel open and the 15 places for vulnerable women in the home will be lost. The closure could leave some women homeless or facing a move to mixed sex accommodation, when that is not suitable for their needs.

Dr Rowan Williams, Patron of the Whitworth Trust, said: “One of the priorities we identified last autumn, when we had the summit on homelessness, was the lack of provision for women, in particular. Clearly young women are particularly vulnerable, they are not the only ones, but this is the only facility for a very, very long distance around for young women at risk. So, given that everybody agrees that this ought to be a priority for us it seems to be the worst possible time for us to lose this facility.

“My hope it that the council thinks hard about the future and that the community will think about their responsibility, particularly to young women here, and this remarkable facility will be able to continue.”

The homelessness charity CamCRAG organised the Big Cambridge Calais Sleepout in January to raise funds for both the homeless in northern France and the Whitworth Trust, which supports Whitworth House. On Monday (April 29) The Mayor, Cllr Gerri Bird, formally presented the total of £9274 raised to representatives of CamCRAG as well as Dr Williams and Dr Jackson, representing the Whitworth Trust.

CamCRAG’s Tony King said: “I’m very pleased with the result. We raised a lot of money and a lot of great publicity about the plight of the homeless. The idea is to help people remember these forgotten people and bring them to the fore.

“This was our second ever sleepout and the sleepers faced a very wet and stormy night . It gave people an idea about some of the things homeless people face. It makes it real.

Afterwards, we can go home to our lovely beds and warm houses the security of our family and our jobs, but the people on the streets of Cambridge and over in Calais and Dunkirk will have to do this over and over again, with no end. And I can’t begin to believe what that is like.”

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