Even the unborn are not immune to growing homelessness crisis (with video)

Mary McCarthy, CEO of Anew family support services, has revealed that so far this year, 26 homeless women have been referred, but they can only accommodate four at a time.

“People are coming in now and there are a whole load of issues,” she said.

“The pregnancy is a small part of it. They could be coming from addiction, domestic violence, chaos, a lot of chaos. And of course homelessness as well.”

Ms McCarthy said that last year, approximately 1,000 clients used their services and there was a 30% rise in the numbers availing of crisis pregnancy and post-abortion counselling.

“That is probably linked to our homeless client increase. We can’t necessarily house them but we can give them counselling,” she said.

She said the women were not showing up in homeless statistics because they were mainly “couch surfers”.

Anew offers family support services. Counsellor Deirdre Shanahan said there has been a rise in the number of men seeking abortion counselling.

READ MORE: Family support service deals with crisis pregnancy, homelessness and even abortion counselling for men