It has emerged that families who present as homeless, outside office hours, have been told by Dublin City Council to register at a Garda station before they can avail of services.
The charity Inner City Helping Homeless said many families are afraid to go to the Gardaí because it could mean Tusla will be notified.
ICHH is calling for the recall of out-of-hours teams who can deal with families face-to-face.
Anthony Flynn, the charity's CEO, said: "What we're doing is, we're not supporting the families in the way that we should, Garda stations are for criminals, they are not for families, not for children they are for people who have committed a crime and so on.
"What we need to do is to put the teams back in place that were in place recently, this is the way to reduce the number of presentation in the evening or late at night, and again I think it's applied to keep the numbers down."
