Charity offers phone numbers to the homeless

Homeless charity St Mungo's and Tech4all, a London-based charity that uses technology to alleviate poverty, have launched a phone service for the homeless.

VoiceMail4All provides homeless people with their own voicemail number which St Mungo's says will help vulnerable people to stay in touch with friends and family and resettlement workers, and to look for accommodation.

Users of the service get a number with an 0208 prefix, making it look like a normal landline phone number.

They can leave a personal outgoing message when they register and can then access messages for free at St Mungo's homeless projects or at local rates from any telephone.

To ensure that they only pay for the call if they have a message to collect, the service indicates that they have no messages by ringing more than two times, allowing the user to hang up before a charge is incurred.

Laura Black, VoiceMail4All co-ordinator at St Mungo's, said: "There are many barriers that prevent homeless people from getting jobs, but not having a secure, reliable and private phone number that potential employers can contact you on is a big one.

"VoiceMail4All makes sure that clients can overcome this barrier. We're all very excited about getting it up and running."

The service uses a telecoms network from Evoxus, supplied by Teamphone. A pilot scheme received £30,000 in funding from Bridge House Trust, and £10,000 each from the London Development Agency, Full Employment UK and Credit Suisse First Boston.

St Mungo's and Tech4all are now launching the service across London.

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