HOMELESS charities have come together in a bid to continue helping rough sleepers during the coronavirus outbreak.

Beacon House in Crouch Street, Colchester, are continuing to provide food, drinks and medicine to people in need six days per week through the windows of their base as they attempt to comply with Government social distancing guidelines.

Where there is a real medical need, homeless people are still able to come into the charity's clinic and be seen by an in-house nurse.

Extra provisions are being given to rough sleepers on Saturday to cover the Sunday when they are closed.

Colchester Council's housing arm, Colchester Borough Homes, is working on providing temporary accommodation to allow homeless people a place to stay over the next few weeks but most still required provisions to help them get through the testing period which means extra challenges for charities supporting them.

The Beacon House team are also now delivering food and medicine to those who have been housed but still required additional assistance, but they have been split between a number of different locations making delivery logistics difficult.

Both the Colchester Soup Run and the Colchester Emergency Night Shelter, based in Alexandra Road, are not functioning as they could before the onset of Covid-19.

But dedicated volunteers from the soup run are making sandwiches and other food stuff which are being delivered to Beacon House and can be passed onto rough sleepers, while night shelter staff are helping them be passed on.

The charities are also working with Colchester Food Bank is also helping provide packs for those with cooking facilities.

As those supplies can last for a number of days, it reduces the amount of travel required and the contact needed.

Beacon House chief executive Steve Brown said work at the moment to help some of the most vulnerable people in society was a genuine team effort and would be impossible without all the charities working together.

He said: "Whilst it may be true that Beacon House is currently the focal point for work among the homeless, and whilst it is certainly true that I have a fantastic team who are consistently going way beyond the call of duty, it is not true that we are doing it all ourselves – we simply couldn’t.

"Unless we work together with our colleagues in other organisations, it will be impossible to meet the increased needs of the homeless during the Covid-19 crisis but if we actively partner up, then, as the Beatles used to sing, 'we’ll get by with a little help from our friends.'"