Balancing outreach, safety and enforcement on the streets
19 May 2026
A think piece by Bill Tidnam, Chief Executive, reflecting on the role support, safety and enforcement agencies can play in helping people move away from rough sleeping
This was a shift in a suburban high street towards the end of February. The weather was unseasonably mild, and I walked with two outreach colleagues along the shopping street just after seven. This is late for many morning outreach shifts, but too early for the shoppers.
The shift was looking for some of the longer-term rough sleepers in the area, and we talked to one man who had slept on the streets for several weeks, but who was reluctant to return to the borough where he had a local connection, and possibly access to a flat which he was unwilling to return to because of a dispute. He was in a sleeping bag when we arrived, but he packed up his stuff after we talked to him and followed us along the street.
Outreach in a changing high street
Around us were others sleeping rough, but others, not obviously sleeping rough, who were hanging around at a distance. They were talking to some of the people sleeping there, and as we drew closer, they were telling the rough sleepers to ignore us and complaining that we had done nothing to help them. We were then distracted by a woman who came up to us, flung her backpack on the ground and threatened to take an overdose, saying that things were getting too much for her.
The workers I was with knew her and managed to calm her down to some degree, and promised to arrange for her to meet a drug worker later in the day. We then moved on and tried to speak to a man who was angry and who would not speak to us because we had not yet been able to house him. He had a bad cough and was talking to himself.
As we made our way up the high street we met other people who were known to the team, reminding them of appointments, or forthcoming emergency accommodation places and we began to gather a small group around us – the man we had first spoken to was keen to introduce us to the people who were sleeping rough in the area, and in some cases to speak on their behalf, and the woman who had approached us earlier came and went sometimes bringing other people with her.
There were more people around now, and we checked a supermarket car park, where the team knew that people had been seen sleeping rough -they weren’t there, but the cleaners told us that people had slept there last night, and they’d gone now.
As we returned to the high street, it was now around 8.30, and our friend introduced us to a young man by a bus stop. We were told he’d just been discharged from prison and had clearly taken heroin. He wasn’t clear where he had slept last night, but he was cold and clearly vulnerable. We bought him a coffee from the nearby bakery, gave him a cheap ‘burner’ phone, and arranged to meet him later as the group around us grew. The woman we had talked to earlier got into an argument and threw her coffee against the shop window, and we met a local drug worker who was looking for a shared client.
We had met and maintained contact with several people sleeping rough in the area and had begun the process of securing them suitable accommodation. The team’s work hadn’t been helped by the activity around us, some of it distracting and some of it actively working to keep people on the streets, and probably aimed at maintaining a busy local drugs market.
Safety, enforcement and support
The area in question is particularly, and understandably, concerned about anti-social behaviour, and associates this with the prevalence of rough sleeping. There’s some truth in this- drug dealers will use the chaos and hopelessness around rough sleeping to sell drugs, and a significant proportion of rough sleepers will consume them. This is, however, not purely a rough sleeping problem, and the solutions are more nuanced.
We did not see any police officers on our shift, and while the council concerned does employ staff to manage anti-social behaviour in the town centre, they tend to work when the shops are open.
There has been a long history of perceived tension between ‘enforcement’ agencies and people who sleep on the streets, as well as notable examples of positive relations between the two (the cleaners we spoke to knew the people sleeping rough in their car park and spoke positively about them). In our shift, we didn’t see anything that would have drawn a particular ‘enforcement’ response – it seems unlikely that any arrest would have taken place or fines issued.
There is, though, an argument that the regular presence of these agencies would have made it more difficult for the people who were involved in the supply of drugs, and possibly made the people who were sleeping there a little safer than they were.
At Thames Reach, we believe that the people we support are not beyond the law, but also that they should receive the same protection as any other member of society. To do this, we recognise that we need the help and support of these enforcement agencies to keep people safe and to allow us to do our job of getting people off the streets.
Donate today
Your support can help people sleeping rough to escape the streets for good.