This week’s good news: Manchester charity to provide footcare for homeless

SockShop has teamed up with a Manchester-based homeless charity, Barnabus, to provide much-needed foot care for homeless people.

As well as volunteering to help run the charity’s drop-in facility, SockShop has arranged for free chiropody treatment to be provided to rough sleepers and each visitor will be given new socks.

Rough sleepers are vulnerable to developing trench foot as they often sleep in damp footwear and do not have access to clean, dry socks.

Contributing to the issue is the fact that socks are one of the most needed but least donated items to homeless charities.

To help combat the problem in Manchester, the Bolton-based sock retailer is ‘taking over’ the Barnabus drop-in centre on Wednesday 25th July to provide care otherwise unavailable to homeless people.

The event is part of the company’s ‘Socks for a Cause’ campaign to raise awareness of the issue of trench foot amongst homeless people.

“We became aware of the issue of trench foot through our work with a number of homeless charities in Greater Manchester,” said David Rigby, campaign coordinator, at SockShop, said.

“Although there is a lot of support for ending homelessness in general, there is not enough support offered in direct response to the issues rough sleepers face on a daily basis, which encouraged us to provide this service – as nobody living in the UK today should suffer from a crippling wartime condition such as trench foot.”