A HOMELESS hostel is building a kitchen garden to help residents deal with traumatic experiences from their childhood.

St Paul's Hostel starts work on the garden, at its site in Tallow Hill, Worcester, tomorrow, with the project due to last for three weeks.

Residents at the property will transform what is currently an overgrown patch of land into an area of fruit trees and vegetables.

Jonathan Sutton, chief executive of the hostel, said the garden will provide therapeutic benefits and free produce for the canteen.

He said: "Tending and growing something is good for you and allows people that quiet and reflective space to come to terms with things that have happened to them in the past.

"We have been really looking forward to the development of our kitchen garden."

Residents taking part in the initiative will level the ground, construct raised beds, make a path and plant the land.

The patch being developed is around 35 metres by 10 metres and faces Newtown Road.

Mr Sutton hopes the project will help residents to tackle traumatic experiences they may have gone through as children.

He said: "For nearly two years St Paul’s hostel has adopted a trauma informed approach to understand why someone arrives at our door.

"Traumatic experiences affect a person’s psychological ability to cope and their biological capacity to regulate the stress hormones and this can shed light on understanding the causation of chronic homelessness."

Mr Sutton added that residents at the hostel showed an 'alarmingly high' number of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) - such as abuse or violence - in a study carried out between December and January.

Some 19 residents were screened during this period, with the average number of ACEs far exceeding that of the general population.

Those taking part in the kitchen garden project received boots, vests, hard hats, gloves, goggles and health and safety training from Worcester Community Trust today.