Once a year in London, the public becomes aware of rough sleepers.

Around Christmas, images of dishevelled teenagers with dogs sitting in cardboard boxes prick consciences and money starts rolling in to homeless charities.

But for the other 364 days of the year hundreds of workers work tirelessly to help rough sleepers get off the streets. Staff from around 200 homeless organisations go out to find people on the streets or offer advice, healthcare, showers and food in day centres.

Despite the government's claim that they reached their target of reducing rough sleeping by two thirds by 2002, there are still a core group of people who are hard to engage along with a steady influx of newcomers from other parts of Britain and Eastern Europe.

Stephen Turley, a former street outreach worker who now manages the Baron's Court Project day centre in west London, believes it is hard to stem the flow of people onto the streets of the city.

"People will always come to London because of the bright lights and countless other reasons, from abroad as well as other parts of the UK. Unless the government creates a long-term housing plan, there will always be homeless people here," he says.

The most recent government figures for June to July last year showed that there were 264 people sleeping rough in London - 175 of them in Westminster.

Figures published by the charity The Simon Community in April this year showed there were 300 rough sleepers on a single night. The charity also contacted 82 hostels on the same night and discovered that only eight beds were available.

But for many rough sleepers with multiple and complex problems, finding a bed is only the beginning.

Adam Rees, outreach manager at St Mungo's, the largest homelessness charity working in London, assesses rough sleepers in Westminster. "We are working with incredibly vulnerable people who have a range of issues, who have stopped being able to trust others, and don't feel optimistic about their lives," he says. "The longer they are on the streets the worse their problems can become."

Andrew Zapletal, a substance misuse worker at homelessness charity Broadway in west London, suggests that some problems are compounded by the fact that "some people are 'warehoused' rather than supported". "The high cost of hostel places means that they would be unable to pay rent if they worked, so they just remain on housing benefit and become deskilled, or drift back onto the streets," he explains.

Stephen Turley believes that some services such as day centres can encourage dependency or "mollycoddling" and estimates that around 20 per cent of people that use the Baron's Court Project have an "element of learned helplessness".

The problem is exacerbated by a lack of move-on accommodation in London. A report on hostel provision by seven homelessness charities published earlier this year found around one third of homeless people were unable to move on from hostels because of a lack of low-cost housing.

Government targets can also act as a barrier to the best provision of services, according to Andrew Zapletal. He says, "If there is a bed space, clients are put in even if it is not appropriate to their needs. It becomes a process of meeting targets rather than people's needs."

Mark Hyder, a volunteer support worker at the Spitalfield's Crypt Trust in east London, believes the project he works for provides an alternative to the more target driven ways of working. He says: "Hostels are purely there to keep people off the streets. Small church-run projects like the Crypt are capable of providing a much better one-to-one service, where people can be befriended."

"Larger homeless charities seem to be wrapped up in empire building, replicating the statutory sector, saying what a wonderful job they are doing rather than doing it," Turley says.

Despite the frustrations of dealing with government targets and the battle for funding, workers' motivation to change lives remains a driving force.

Turley says: "In a climate where political spinÊmasks the real issues affecting homeless people, we need to get back to the core issue of helping those people that are less fortunate than ourselves and tackling injustice."