London Nightstop Referral Form Guidance Notes
London Nightstop works to provide emergency accommodation for young people who are in immediate housing crisis. The project works with 16 to 25 year olds and provides overnight accommodation in the homes of volunteer ‘hosts’ who will provide a clean and safe environment along with an evening meal and breakfast and a ‘listening ear’ if required.
Please see Depaul UK’s website or the London Nightstop information leaflet for more details of what the service provides.
The process for agencies to make a referral to LondonNightstop is as follows:
a)Contact London Nightstop on the telephone number: 07767 882 881also at the bottom of this document
b)You will be able to speak to a Nightstop team member between the hours of 10.00a.m and 4.00 p.m. Monday to Friday. Unfortunately we are unable to take any referrals outside these hours at present.
c)Following a brief discussion with a team member about whether your referral is appropriate for the project, we will ask you to complete a referral form or we will discuss alternative accommodation options if we think the young person is not suitable for our projects. (We will rarely refuse to accept a referral unless it is apparent at this stage that Nightstop accommodation would not be suitable to the young persons needs).
d)Should London Nightstop have no vacancies with hosts at the time you telephone the project, we will advise you immediately. We will offer advice and guidance on alternative accommodation options.
e)If it is appropriate to proceed with the referral, we will fax or e-mail you our referral form for completion.
f)All completed referrals should either be faxed to 020 7939 1221or e-mailed to
g)Once we have received the completed referral form we will re-contact you by telephone and this will be within the hour.
h)When we contact you to complete the referral process we will need you to have the young person there so that we can talk to them.
i)At this stage we will usually be able to inform you of whether we are able to offer the young person emergency accommodation. Occasionally however, we may have to make further enquiries with other agencies if there are any areas on the information provided that needs further exploration
j)If we will not be offering the young person accommodation, we will explain fully the reasons for our decision and offer advice and guidance regarding alternative accommodation options
k)If the young person is to be accommodated by Nightstop we will talk to you about the next stage in the process i.e. for to talk to meet with the young person and to arrange for them to access the host accommodation.
l)The young person or their key worker needs to contact London Nightstop on a daily basis to discuss whether further accommodation is needed for that evening. We will give priority to placing those young people who were accommodated the night before. However, if we do not hear from the young person or their worker before 12 noon, they will no longer have priority over any new referrals to the service.
Further information
This is a very brief overview of the process so please contact the London Nightstop Team if you wish to discuss this in more detail.
Please note that we can only accept referrals from agencies that have met with the young person face to face and have obtained a signed consent form (attached to the referrals form) from the young person.
We will need to talk to the with the young person after the referral has been processed and approved so we rely on our referral agencies to provide as much information as possible to support the referral.
Nightstop provides accommodation on a ‘night by night’ basis and after the initial referral we will determine how many nights the young person will need accommodation by having contact with them and/or their key worker on a daily basis to address any continuing needs for the service.
There is a 7 day limit on Nightstop accommodation, though in exceptional circumstances this can be extended.
The young person is expected to engage with support offered by Nightstop and other agencies to address their longer term housing situation as Nightstop is an emergency accommodation project only.
London Nightstop is based at:
Depaul UK
Central Office
291-299 Borough High Street
London
SE1 1JG
Tel: 07767 882 881
Fax: 020 7939 1221
E mail: