The ordinary south manchester house where teens finally celebrate birthdays

IT DOES VITAL WORK - BUT IT NEEDS MANCHESTER'S HELP 07:10, 01 Jun 2025 Wilbraham Road is lined with redbrick houses where Mancs raise families, host friends, and celebrate Christmases

and birthdays together. It’s a perfect picture of ordinary, suburban bliss. But one of those ordinary redbrick semis is an extraordinary place. It’s the home of Contact Hostel, a refuge for

teenage girls and young women where they turn their lives around. Shanae Byrne, now 23, was one of those. She moved to Contact in early 2020, just five days after she turned 18, with all of

her possessions in two black bin bags. When she left two years later, she had a full-time job at a solicitors’ firm and a flat in Levenshulme. But her abiding memory from the hostel is

simply celebrating her birthday for the first time. Article continues below “My birthday is January 2 so everyone is Christmassed-out, skint, and hungover. So I never celebrated my birthday

other than at Contact,” Shanae explained, speaking to the _Local Democracy Reporting Service_ via a video link to her employer’s boardroom in Macclesfield. “They never missed a birthday at

Contact, we used to get a massive bag of presents at Christmas,” she recalled, smiling. “We used to have a big, massive cake for a birthday and a takeaway of your choice. We would have a

takeaway to last the week.” Shanae entered the care system just before she became an adult, and when she hit 18 she was asked to leave it. “I did not know what it was like to be away from

home. I was completely out of my depth,” Shanae, originally from Moston, went on. “I had to move to the other side of Manchester. I thought south Manchester was really rough, I was thinking

I was moving into the depths of Moss Side.” Instead Contact, in leafy Whalley Range, provided her a place to ‘open up and feel that motherly love that I missed’ being homeless. After

arriving, Shanae settled in, got help from staff applying for housing benefits, then found a job. But she ‘had the rug pulled out from underneath me’ a few months later when she was made

redundant at the start of the Covid-19 lockdown. Eventually, with more help from support worker Karen Haselden, she found an apprenticeship at a conveyancing firm, and Contact even installed

WiFi booster boxes so she could work from home full-time. After repeatedly bidding for a council house on Manchester Move, she secured a one-bed flat in Levenshulme in early 2022. Even as

she was about to leave Contact, staff continued to help by buying ‘£1,000’ of carpets for her new pad, and donating kitchen utensils and furniture the centre didn’t need any more. Contact

was ‘so life changing’ for Shanae, and she’s far from its only success story. Another resident has just secured a place at the University of Law having studied for her A-levels in the

hostel, according to Helen Gazard. Contact was set up in 1970 by Brigid Murphy, who used her own money to stop Manchester’s teenage girls ‘being groomed or exploited’. Its ethos is to

‘provide a home for girls facing homelessness and support them into education, training, or employment’, added fundraising lead Helen. But the hostel’s job is getting harder and harder, she

warned. “Every year we have to raise some money ourselves and we get some from statutory sources,” she said. “That used to be 50pc, now with the cost of living crisis it’s 30pc from housing

benefit and the council. “We need to raise 70pc which is the most we have ever had to do.” They need £225,000, and it costs £306,000 to keep Contact running every year. Compounding matters

is the extra pressure on staff seen recently, with the charity forking out for additional mental health training as ‘more and more’ people with those issues are coming in. There’s also huge

demand for the centre, with 63 people referred there in 2023/24, but only 23 could be accommodated. It’s only a small charity, with nine bedrooms for service users, and nine part-time staff.

“Historically, we used to have funding from trusts and foundations that were quiet so we have been quiet — but times have changed,” Helen explained as she appealed for new donations. While

Contact’s future is not under threat, the donations pay for ‘extra things like the Christmas presents and trips to Blackpool’ which ‘sets Contact apart from others’. Although they might seem

luxuries, Helen said ‘they are things that really make a difference’. “We have girls come at 17 that have not had a birthday cake before,” she added. Shanae was one of them. Article

continues below _YOU CAN SUPPORT __CONTACT ONLINE HERE__ OR VIA THE __EASYFUNDRAISING __APP._