About Us

Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information was established in 1980 as ‘CentreCare’ under the auspices of St Mary's Pro-Cathedral and Crosscare, the Dublin Diocese Social Care Agency, to meet the diverse needs of those coming to the Pro-Cathedral seeking assistance. Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information operates at two levels;

• provision of a high quality information, advocacy and referral service to vulnerable people, with a view to enabling them to make informed choices about their options and
• use of trends in client queries to inform relevant policy development, with a view to creating a more just and caring society.

Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information has a team of information officers and shares a co-ordinator, receptionist and administrator with Crosscare Migrant Project (formerly Emigrant Advice).

Based in Dublin's city centre, Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information provides a walk-in information service to people experiencing poverty and social exclusion. The agency has an open-door policy, responding in a people-centred manner to those contacting the service. Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information carries out advocacy and follow-up work on cases of its clients and refers clients to specialist agencies where necessary.

Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information’s outreach information service to food centres is one of a range of its many ‘outreach’ efforts to reach more people with information needs. Crosscare Housing and Welfare Information records its homeless-related queries on Dublin Link (the Homeless Agency’s Dublin-wide database) and its non-homeless-related queries on its own database. It uses these records to track trends among service users. It researches the issues underlying the trends and campaigns for problems arising to be appropriately addressed (see account of ‘Creating Crisis - the impact of rent supplement restrictions’ as an example of this work).