‘Sam’, aged five, eating as he knelt on a piece of cardboard on Grafton Street last night

The Homeless Street Café is a group of volunteers who offer food, toiletries, clothes and friendship to people who are homeless every Tuesday night on Grafton Street in Dublin.

Last night.

One of the group’s members posted the above picture on the group’s Facebook page with the message:

“There is an image burnt in all the teams’ minds tonight. It’s wrong and it’s distressing but this IS happening and it’s only getting worse each week.

‘Sam’ is 5 and this was him eating a dinner of carbonara tonight on a sheet of cardboard. Can we really accept this?”

Homeless Street Cafe (Facebook)

We have no way of completely verifying the accuracy of the above image but we are taking the homeless café at their word unless we hear otherwise and no ‘clickbait’ motives were behind this post and sorry for upset caused.

H/T: Mick Caul

UPDATE:

This afternoon.

The Homeless Street Café has written the following update on their Facebook page:

“Thank you so much everyone for your overwhelming response and for not just accepting that this is ok.

This post has reached over a quarter of a million people which is amazing and we have over a thousand comments and messages to go through.

We are small volunteer group and all our team are back in their day jobs today so please bare with us as we navigate through our next steps.

Our priority as always is continuing to support the homeless who come to us each week and the children among them that “Sam” represents.

**To confirm “Sam” is in emergency accommodation and attends school. His mother is simply trying to access nutritious home cooked meals for him.

Most emergency accommodations strictly forbid cooking or food preparation.”

The Homeless Street Café (Facebook)