London Destitution Service

Home / Services / Homelessness / London Destitution Service

Practical advice and support, pastoral care, emergency provision, food, laundry and showers for people seeking asylum in London.

Refugee Council Friday Drop-In Service
Fridays 11am to 3pm

We accept the first 15 people, with no entries after 12 noon.

If you want to use our service, please come at 11am as we may have reached our 15-person capacity before the deadline of 12:00pm.

New Clients

We can accept two new people each week at the current time. Please ensure you have your Home Office paperwork (BAIL 201 and other relevant documents).

Please find our address and contact details at the bottom of this page.

What we offer

We provide the following support:

Pastoral care
Cold and hot food
Referrals and signposting to other specialist services including legal advice, health access, shelters, hosting schemes
Shower and laundry
ESOL classes
Psychosocial activities including workshops in photography, art and music so the clients can learn new skills and develop a way of reconnecting with themselves

Who it's for

People seeking asylum or people refused asylum who are destitute
Vulnerable and homeless people seeking asylum who have lost contact with their asylum application and have no legal representation

Contact Details

destitution@refugeecouncil.org.uk
Hackney Day Centre
Red Cross Building
92 Dalston Lane
London
E8 1NG

Drop-in open on Fridays, 11am until 3pm

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.

Necessary

Always Enabled

Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.

Cookie	Duration	Description
viewed_cookie_policy	1 year	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.

Others

Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_te_	session	No description
bwid_withoutSameSiteForIncompatibleClients	1 year	Third party cookies to enable the embedding of The Guardian video player.
CONSENT	16 years 6 months 10 days 12 hours	Used to store the consent of an user on the site
KRTBCOOKIE_10	1 year 1 month 4 days	Identify the user for our programmatic ads - CasaleMedia is an ad exchange network
wp_api	past	Used to recognise you when you return to our website, record information about choices you have made and allow us to tailor the website to your needs.
wp_api_sec	past	Used to recognise you when you return to our website, record information about choices you have made and allow us to tailor the website to your needs.
yt-remote-connected-devices	never	Stores the user's video player preferences using embedded YouTube video
yt-remote-device-id	never	Stores the user's video player preferences using embedded YouTube video

Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.

Cookie	Duration	Description
__adroll	1 year 1 month	This cookie is set by AdRoll Group, to identify the device when the users move between different Digital Properties, for the purpose of serving targeted advertisements.
__adroll_fpc	1 year	This cookie is set by AdRoll Group, to identify the device when the users move between different Digital Properties, for the purpose of serving targeted advertisements.
__adroll_shared	1 year 1 month	The domain of this cookie is owned by Adroll. This cookie is used for collecting user data across website. The collected data is used to serve more relevant advertisement.
__ar_v4	1 year	This cookie is associated with Google DoubleClick. This cookie is used for advertising purposes. It helps in tracking the ads conversion rates.
_fbp	3 months	This cookie is set by Facebook to deliver advertisement when they are on Facebook or a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting this website.
adrl	1 month	This cookie is used to register data on the visitors. This information is used to optimmize the advertisement relevance.
CMID	1 year	The cookie is set by CasaleMedia. The cookie is used to collect information about the usage behavior for targeted advertising.
CMPRO	3 months	This cookie is set by Casalemedia and is used for targeted advertisement purposes.
CMPS	3 months	This cookie is set by Casalemedia and is used for targeted advertisement purposes.
CMRUM3	1 year	This cookie is set by Casalemedia and is used for targeted advertisement purposes.
CMST	1 day	The cookie is set by CasaleMedia. The cookie is used to collect information about the usage behavior for targeted advertising.
CMTS	3 months	The cookie is set by CasaleMedia. The cookie is used to collect information about the usage behavior for targeted advertising.
cookieJartestCookie	17 hours	This cookie is set by the provider Outbrain. This cookie is used by the website operator inorder to know the efficiency of the marketing by determining how the user accessed the website.
fr	3 months	The cookie is set by Facebook to show relevant advertisments to the users and measure and improve the advertisements. The cookie also tracks the behavior of the user across the web on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin.
IDE	1 year 24 days	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
NID	6 months	This cookie is used to a profile based on user's interest and display personalized ads to the users.
PUBMDCID	3 months	This cookie is set by pubmatic.com. The cookie stores an ID that is used to display ads on the users' browser.
t_gid	1 year	The cookie is set by taboola.com. The cookie assigns a unique user ID to users and use this ID for serving relevant advertisement and content.
test_cookie	15 minutes	This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
tluid	3 months	This cookie is set by the provider AdRoll.This cookie is used to identify the visitor and to serve them with relevant ads by collecting user behaviour from multiple websites.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.
YSC	session	This cookies is set by Youtube and is used to track the views of embedded videos.

Analytics

Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gat_gtag_UA_1206459_1	1 minute	This cookie is set by Google and is used to distinguish users.
_gat_UA-1206459-1	1 minute	This is a pattern type cookie set by Google Analytics, where the pattern element on the name contains the unique identity number of the account or website it relates to. It appears to be a variation of the _gat cookie which is used to limit the amount of data recorded by Google on high traffic volume websites.
_gcl_au	3 months	This cookie is used by Google Analytics to understand user interaction with the website.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visted in an anonymous form.
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress	30 minutes	Used for HotJar Analytics
_hjFirstSeen	30 minutes	This is set by Hotjar to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions.
_hjid	1 year	This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample	2 minutes	Used for HotJar Analytics
_hjIncludedInSessionSample	2 minutes	Used for HotJar Analytics
_hjTLDTest	session	This is set by Hotjar to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions.
obuid	3 months	The domain of this cookie is owned by Outbrain. This cookie is used to distribute content targeted to individuals interest.

Functional

Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.

Cookie	Duration	Description
bwid	1 year	This cookie is set by the provider The Guardian. This cookie is used for embedding The Guardian video player.
PugT	1 month	This cookie is set by pubmatic.com. The purpose of the cookie is to check when the cookies were last updated on the browser in order to limit the number of calls to the server-side cookie store.
vsid	30 minutes	This cookie is used for enabling Live Chat facility on the website. The cookie enables to track the connection with the Live Chat and ensures the privacy of a conversation.

Performance

Popular search queries