About CARE
Our founding member began our mission in 1992. He had a desire to help local disadvantaged people, which he started to do by recycling furniture to donate out to people in need. Building up a small army of volunteers, he took over large empty premises in Cleethorpes to use for furniture recycling and this evolved into our CARE Shop. CARE became a registered charity in 1993. During his work with furniture donations, he found himself witnessing the effects of debt, especially it’s destructive effects on family relationships. As a response CARE offered free shop space to Citizens Advice to help and advise people, so began our enduring partnership working with Citizens Advice. Further inequality was observed as people needed homes but could not access the Private Rental Sector because finding the deposit and rent in advance was an insurmountable barrier. This barrier started to be brought down alongside our local authority who donated £2500 in 1994 to get a unique to our area housing project started where no deposit or rent in advance was required. This was the birth of CARE Housing.
CARE volunteer programme provided low-level support to people CARE housed. However, over time volunteers noticed that people’s needs were becoming more complex, and more intensive support would better meet their needs. In 2003, CARE Support was born through Supporting People Housing Related Support funding to support the people CARE housed. This began to make an enormous difference to tenancy sustainment and very few damages bonds needed to be paid out by CARE due to the support our tenants were receiving.