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Update: The Numbers

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Here are just a few of the outcomes that happened in The Gate, just one of the 17 Crisis centres that opened for a week over Christmas and where I spent the week:  • D. was found a bed in a winter night shelter • M. has been lined up with an appointment to be assessed for a residential detox • D. was referred to a supported housing project • T. was found accommodation in a shelter • A’s universal credit claim was updated • E. was referred to a shelter • A’s universal credit application was made and advice given on how to set up a bank account • H. was given accommodation to bridge the gap between leaving Crisis and returning to live with family in the new year • V. was referred to a supported housing project • D. was given help to obtain and collect his id and new passport. He is now able to work here and/or return home • R. was found a bed in a winter night shelter • W. has been given an appointment for an assessment with an alcohol support service • N. was reconnected w
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Day 05/05: The 2,000 Steps of Christmas

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The Gate is open for seven days over Christmas, I'm doing five so today was my last day and poignant because of that, I look forward to the week every year meeting regular volunteers, some returning guests and learning new skills in the kitchen I can take home for 2019. This is the last day Digger comes in so I remembered to bring in my blunt useless kitchen knives for him to sharpen, he is such a traditionalist when it comes to sharpening techniques. We give him a station in the kitchen for his steels, blocks and strop and he works through all of the kitchen and volunteer knives. Naturally I wasn't paying close attention as I used one of his knives later and cut myself when it just skimmed my finger. We use blue bandaids rather than traditional skin colour ones so they can be spotted if they fall off onto food, a latex glove on top to keep it dry. On this penultimate day of Crisis@Christmas we try to max out on all the fresh food we have left in the larder, any of th
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Day 04/05: Two Tagines and some Kohlrabi

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This year my daughter is volunteering for her first experience of The Gate as a General Volunteer after a taster years ago as a teenager with Dad. She comes home with a compendium of stories and anecdotes that makes me realise just how cut off I am in the kitchen. Last year we were in a Finsbury academy with a small kitchen in the very centre of things and it was easy to be part of the action. Our hosting Battersea academy/school is huge but then so is our kitchen, that means no line of sight or intimacy with The Gate guests or volunteers to chat with across a counter whilst prepping food, or painful yet funny karaoke to listen to from guests and volunteers.  My diary is kitchen-centric this year and I'll post some true life outcomes in my post of this year. After the full-on stress and momentum of a Christmas Day kitchen, it was back to "normal" this afternoon (27th) peeling, chopping, dicing and slicing boxes of parsnips, onions and cabbage, oh so much cabbage! I
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Day 03/05: It was Christmas Day in the cookhouse

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By Christmas Day Crisis At Christmas is in full magnificent swing, a huge operation to supply, feed and enjoy a special day for 4.500 guests and 11,000 volunteers giving up their Christmas at home to help. I love the annual photo of the turkeys awaiting distribution to each of the Crisis kitchens as it's a sobering remind of the task ahead. I do marvel at the Distribution Centre, The Hub, that stores and supplies the food to the kitchens around London and now Birmingham, Coventry and Croydon. Palettes of food and supplies are being loaded into vans with volunteer drivers and navigators delivering 7D24H resupplying our kitchen as we run low of essential items. We don't know what food or quantities they will have so chef looks at our Gate larder, The Hub stock levels and the number of guests  to decide on the menus we can cook. Our guests and volunteers always hope for traditional Christmas menu and today will be no exception, I've noticed and learnt how it hold a dif
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Day 02/05: The Ovens are fired up at The Gate

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There are already guests in the centre when we arrive on the first day for the 3pm welcome briefing to new afternoon shift volunteers , a lunch meal has already been cooked and served and the morning team are cleaning the kitchen in anticipate of handover to us. The welcome briefing updates us with standing instructions, advice and orientation taking 50 minutes as there is so much to cover, new volunteers get a chance to understand what is going the happen and regulars spot each other across the crowded room smiling, waving or nodding to familiar faces. Many volunteers come back time and time again from across the country fitting in a few days each Christmas to help out at The Gate. When we arrive in the kitchen our chef, Claire,  assigns us our initial duties preparing the hot meal, dessert, or one of a myriad of other tasks in  busy industrial kitchen. Digger arrives, a regular, who runs the Narcotics Anonymous group and is also an expert knife sharpener taking and making our
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Day 01/05: Bootstrapping The Gate

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A lot of activity goes on during the year and the run up to Christmas I won't be covering here, unless you post a question in the comments. We rock up after a year's break just before Christmas Eve to take over a school or academy that has been loaned to us and we will turn into The Gate (Dependency Centre), ready to receive hundreds of volunteers and guest the next day. Today we clean the kitchen because our guests are vulnerable to infections, they and our volunteers will be enjoying food cooked and served to a very high health standards you won't enjoy on the High Street, believe me on that. James and I went off to buy today's kickstart fresh veg whilst the dry goods, cans, freezers and chiller dairy goods were delivered from the central warehouse (The Hub) to get us started. As the kitchen was cleaned to an inch of its life, we familiarised ourselves with the new layout, stored and stacked the food, sorted the utensils and learnt how to operate the indus
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Day 00/05 - Catering Brief 2018

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A couple of weeks before we open the Crisis At Christmas centres, the volunteers arrive en masse one Sunday morning for a briefing. We are split into the various topic groups and our Catering teams from the centres gather for a welcome, briefing and the mandatory Powerpoint with unfeasibly small fonts for the back rows.  It's a chance for apprehensive new Kitchen Assistants to ask any question before the big day and to meet others in the same position, a chance too for old lags to meet up with returning buddies from last year's centres. This year there will be 17 centres, 11 in London with four day centres open 9am-9pm for anyone to drop into, some guests will be referred onto one of five residential 24hr centres, typically those who have nowhere to sleep or know to outreach groups and shelters. This year we have a "hybrid" centre in Croydon that is both a Day Centre and a Residential Centre. There is an Operations Centre in Bermondsey handling food distribu
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