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Organising support at the Hillsborough Boys’ Club and other locations

  1. Almost immediately, large numbers of people began to arrive at the Boys’ Club. As well as families and friends trying to find information about loved ones, many social workers, faith workers and volunteers turned up, having responded to calls for assistance.
     
  2. Accounts indicate that initially the scene was chaotic, but gradually the volunteers and care professionals created some order and provided a range of support services. Arrangements were made for a psychiatrist and psychologist to set up a bereavement counselling service in a quiet room upstairs, and the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) arrived to provide refreshments. Each family group had one or two professionals or volunteers allocated to them.
     
  3. The evidence strongly indicates that the police played little or no role in making these arrangements and had very little interaction with the families and friends waiting at the Boys’ Club. Inspector Bernard Hogan-Howe (Insp Hogan-Howe) was the senior police officer there; in a statement to Operation Resolve, he confirmed he mostly spent his time upstairs in the office, attempting to get information from the hospitals and other locations.
     
  4. There were well over 200 people there at some points, making the environment extremely noisy. As the Boys’ Club became increasingly busy, a second reception centre was opened at around 5pm. This was at St John the Baptist Church Hall on Forbes Road, about 0.2 miles from the Boys’ Club. The facilities there were more suitable. Again, the organisation of support was left to social services and volunteers, with little police involvement.
     
  5. Later in the evening, steps were taken to differentiate the use of the Church Hall from the Boys’ Club, with the Church Hall being used to provide additional support for family members and friends who had identified their loved ones at the gymnasium and were grieving. The Boys’ Club was then used for those who were still waiting to go to the gymnasium or hear news about their loved ones. 
     
  6. Additional locations were also identified to offer further support to families, including facilities where people could sleep overnight. In the end, these were barely used.
     
  7. From about 9.30pm, groups of those waiting at the Boys’ Club were taken by bus to the gymnasium to begin the formal identification process. Many families and volunteers have said that they were not given any details of what they were about to experience at the gymnasium.
     
  8. The operation at the Boys’ Club closed down in the early hours of 16 April. The Church Hall stayed open for a few hours longer.