Dreams is to donate to charity partner Shelter for every sale over the Easter weekend.
The chain will pay £5 to the housing and homelessness charity for every transaction, both in-store and online, from Friday 7 April to Tuesday 11 April.
The money raised will be used to fund Shelter’s emergency helpline which gets nearly 1,000 calls a day from people experiencing or at risk of some form of homelessness.
‘Our partnership with Shelter is driven by the belief that everyone should have a safe home with a bed to call their own. Traditionally Easter is a busy trading period for us, so we wanted to channel that footfall and shopping as a force for good. Through this activity, customers who choose to buy from us over the Bank Holiday are getting the quality products and service they know and love from Dreams, and helping to make a safe night’s sleep a reality,’ says Jonathan Hirst, Dreams ceo.
The chain has a three-year partnership with the charity and has targeted raising £150,000.
There are 99,270 households in England currently living in temporary accommodation housing provided by local authorities when a person or household becomes homeless. Temporary accommodation is not designed for permanent living, but the lack of safe, secure and affordable homes means families are often trapped there for long periods. Shelter’s analysis reveals that 125,000 children live in temporary accommodation, equivalent to 1 in every 100.
Shelter’s research found that more than one in three parents living in temporary accommodation (35%) said their children do not have their own bed and almost six in ten (57%) reported that temporary accommodation was having a negative impact on their children’s physical or mental health.