At The Bridge we’re really proud of all the services we offer, and the amount of resources and projects we currently provide. But it’s not been easy to get to where we are now, and there’s still a lot of work that goes into the day to day running of the organisation. We thought the best way to understand the inner workings of The Bridge was to speak to our Centre Manager, Keith, to learn about his role and what goes into running a homelessness charity.
‘My role covers a lot of logistics, making sure we’re stocked with everything we need, managing the staff, answering email queries, working with our CEO on bid writing, and progressing with our business plan and moving the organisation forward. I also need to make sure we’re employing the right staff for the right positions, and that our talented team have all the support they need to perform their specific duties. As well as making sure we work effectively together as a staff team, I want to ensure that we work closely with other organisations and that the centre is open to those who want to come and do their work here for the benefit of our guests.
I’d say an average day for me is all about making sure the centre has all the resources it needs, such as food, and the personnel to open as regularly as we do.
I like to be in early to deal with any issues that may have cropped up on the day to day, which may affect the running of our service. I’ll go through emails to The Bridge and respond to anyone asking for assistance, and schedule calls with people to have a conversation about the best way The Bridge can help. After that I check that the staff we have that day is enough, and that everyone knows what they are doing. If there are any issues that may prevent us from running, I make sure they’re all responded to.
Being the main point of contact throughout the day means I need to make sure that staff feel supported at all times, and that they can come ask for help.
I’m currently focusing on the business plan, checking that we’re adhering to that at a time when we’re facing an unprecedented need. I need to ensure we progress in a way that means we can build and sustain the organisation, and deal with every issue that comes in.
If I had to think of any challenges that come from this role, it would be that we’ve grown a lot, so there is a larger staff team to manage, with more disparate kinds of roles, and a lot of different elements to The Bridge that didn’t exist three years ago. All of this comes into play when making sure things are running in the way that we want them to run.
Another way we’ve grown is the huge increase in the number of guests we see everyday. We are seeing almost double the numbers of people accessing our services compared to 2022 which increases the pressure on both our staff and resources. To manage this, the staff team has doubled in size, so everything is twice as big as it was two years ago.
One thing I do love is how varied my role is. The fact that I get to see the immediate difference The Bridge makes to peoples lives, the satisfaction of keeping this place open, and working with a really great team of staff is the best part of this role.
One part of The Bridge that I do feel gets overlooked is the fact that we’re open every day, and that we’re one of the most consistent services in terms of always being open and always being a warm and friendly space that people can use to escape difficult situations, even if just for a day. I think we take for granted just how powerful it is to be open as much as we are, to have never been shut more than three days in a row since Covid. It does get forgotten sometimes. People might see that we can’t always solve the bigger problems, but we should never overlook that we offer an open space for people to get a drink and a hot meal.
I’ve been at The Bridge since March of 2021. It is so much busier now than when I started, which was right as we were coming out of our second lockdown in Leicester, and we were dealing with a lot of the after effects of Brexit at the time. A huge percentage of guests we were helping back then needed support with their settled status. We were seeing 20 to 30 people through the doors each day, but now we’re averaging 85 people, and a far wider cross section of people who need support, with a much more varied range of issues. A problem we face now is that it’s much more difficult to get people into homes as there are far fewer options to get people into safe and stable accommodations.
In the future, it would be great if we could do more to help with the issue of providing accommodation. I’d also like to see The Bridge provide more sessions to our guests to support mental health, or to just have in place a more general support system for guests mental health.’
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