Centrepoint-homeless-girl-wrapped-in-blanketSophie is the youngest of three children. Growing up, Sophie’s childhood was traumatic – her mum had mental health issues and her dad was an alcoholic.

Sophie often suffered physical abuse at the hands of her parents. Her earliest memory is of being beaten black and blue by her dad when she was just three years old. Sophie was eventually placed in foster care and began to put her past behind her. Then, tragically, her foster mum died suddenly and Sophie found herself on the streets almost overnight.

Sophie was homeless for the next three years – mainly living on the streets, sleeping in doorways and parks. During this time one of her friends overdosed. Another was raped and murdered.

Thankfully Sophie found Centrepoint and has now been living in one of our services in south London for the past eight months. Sophie loves her room with its blue door and space for her few belongings and beloved teddy bears. It’s somewhere she feels completely safe.

Since being at Centrepoint, Sophie has formed great relationships with her support and development worker and her key worker, who has helped her to go back to college to take adult literacy and numeracy classes. In addition to her studies, Sophie is learning basic life skills such as budgeting, how to pay bills and cooking.

Sophie is also having intensive counselling to help her cope with her traumatic childhood and is learning to feel better about herself, having spent a lifetime feeling, in her words, worthless and ugly.

Minimum donation – £12 per month

For just 40p a day (£12 a month) you could give a young person a room and so much more:

  • A warm, dry, safe room for up to two years
  • Counselling and support to help them overcome problems
  • Training and careers advice to help them into college or employment

In return

As a Centrepoint Room Sponsor you’ll learn all about the room you sponsor and the young person staying in it.  We think it is only right that you should see how the money is spent and the change it’s enabling in a young person’s life.

  • Once you have registered you will be allocated a room and receive your own username and password
  • You’ll have access to an exclusive website where you will be able to look around the room you’ve sponsored
  • You’ll also receive regular updates about the progress being made by the young person staying in the room you sponsor
  • You can control how you receive updates and how often.  As little or as much as you like – it’s up to you