Charity for homeless offers help off the back of a lorry

CRISIS, the charity for single homeless people, is intent on providing a service a cut above the rest this Christmas, writes David Connett.

Its mobile barbershop is just one of a score of services offered literally off the back of a lorry by the charity this year.

Steven Boffey, from Camden, north London, was one of an estimated 500 homeless people who have used the converted 40ft articulated lorry, which provides vital services including food, first aid, companionship and clothes to people living on the capital's streets.

The charity is also providing a voluntary tuberculosis screening programme following an increase of the disease among homeless people.

'The mobile Open Christmas allows us to offer vital services to homeless people that don't make it to our shelters. Last year it experienced such high demand in Acton that we've organised a full service at a shelter there this year,' Mark Scothern, the director of Crisis, said

(Photograph omitted)