Safe Square located in Barkers pool, Sheffield has run out of its temporary funding this week and won’t be present for the foreseeable future.
The service provides essential support to night-goers such as medical assistance, a meeting point, taxi organisation, helpful chats and phone charging.
Kayleigh Waine, Project Manager of Safe Square said: “Safe Square is essentially just a medical and welfare setup for the night time community. If you don’t know what’s going on you can always come here first.”
It’s majority funded by the South Yorkshire Violence Reduction Unit and SCC Safer Sheffield Community Safety Partnership. They managed to find some extra funding to extend the service from the initial pilot scheme in 2023.
Any extra sessions from the initial pilot in December 2023 are pilot extensions with the latest extension running from end of January to March 2025.
Waine said: “It’s all about getting budgets from other places and see what they can afford to spend and make a plan based off of that. It’s like a business proposal basically, which takes a lot of time.”
Safe Square is working hard to collaborate with different authorities for plans of a more permanent model.
A student living in Sheffield, Erin Ayerst said: “It’s so reassuring having them here. Back home we don’t have stuff like this. I don’t really go out much but I know people who have used it on nights out.
“I feel safer with them here because it’s a good backup to have if anything goes wrong on a night out. It would be great for Safe Square to be here permanently.”
To secure extra funding they must collect data to prove that the service they provide is being used and liked by the public.
Kayleigh Waine, said: “We collect as much data as we can and keep it free of identifying factors as possible when we send the report out.
A woman from the Violence Reduction unit called Angela Greenwood is amazing at stuff like this. She goes to different places with data for us.”
Safe Square received £22,000 in funding for their latest extension.