At the Doorstep Homeless Families Project in Hampstead, “there are children who are two or three years old that can’t even walk because they’ve been living in such confined spaces that they’ve never had the chance to learn”, Kimberley Coke, head of communications at StreetSmart, tells me. “It’s so sad. People can just get stuck in a rut with no way out.”
It’s the kind of story that stops you in your tracks. Doorstep – a charity that gives families living in cramped temporary accommodation somewhere to drop their children so they can play, run and simply be children – is one of the projects StreetSmart funds. And it’s one of the countless examples of how a small act – in this case, a voluntary £1 added to a restaurant bill – can ripple out to change lives.
