Council officials to meet with homeless charity COPE
GALWAY County Council are set to meet with representatives from COPE Galway to see how they can better help those struggling with homelessness.
COPE is a local charity providing essential social services to families, men, women and children across Galway city and county. Every year, they support more than 3,000 people through their services, including the many who become homeless.
Representatives from the charity will be invited to attend a meeting of the council’s Housing Strategic Policy Committee. It will be an opportunity to learn about the challenges they are facing, and the best ways the council can use the resources at their disposal to help COPE.
“Dealing with homelessness is a difficult situation, as it is extremely emotive for everyone involved. But there is national funding available to us to try and provide more emergency accommodation,” explained Director of Housing Damien Mitchell during a plenary meeting of Galway County Council.
“The reality is COPE are always at capacity in their centre in Galway city. We are trying to help through initiatives such as the homeless accommodation proposed for Vicar Street in Tuam, a place that will be accessible 24 hours a day to those who need it.
“We are also looking at other locations, such as Ballinasloe and Oranmore. We are happy to investigate other places that councillors are aware of too that could provide emergency accommodation.”
The meeting also saw question marks raised over the council’s out of hours service, which deals with queries regarding homelessness whenever their housing office is closed.
A recent encounter with the service has left Councillor Donagh Killilea questioning if they are informed enough to deal with these urgent encounters from people in need of support.
“On Friday May 15, I got a call from a concerned parent who was in distress as their son had suddenly been made homeless,” recalled the Tuam based councillor.
“The person who took my call didn’t seem to have much information which could help the person made homeless, but they were able to put him in touch with Cope eventually. I want to know who answers these out of office calls, as they need to better informed.”
Addressing his concerns, council CEO Liam Conneally confirmed out of office calls are taken by a third-party provider, which many other local authorities use.
Mr Conneally said that he will contact the company to make sure that they are more informed of the council’s homelessness services and better able to respond to queries in the future.