Recent news reports about a journalist / film maker who died whilst living on the streets for a TV project have become quite complicated.  Lee Halpin was originally reported to have died of hypothermia but the BBC have said that there might be a link with the death to the arrest of two individuals on suspicion of the supply of a controlled substance.  A post-mortem is due to be held on the 9th.  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-22042626

We all too often see our service users getting embroiled in risky behaviour and see the life experiences that they have had as leading to this situation.  There are many unanswered questions in the case of Lee Halpin but it does seem to be very clear that someone who can function well in ‘normal’ society has very quickly slipped into a position of ultimate risk.

Our latest awareness raising campaign is a series of ‘Blue Plaques’ placed around Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield.  The English Heritage Blue Plaques remember noteworthy individuals and often mark places where they lived.  Our plaques do the same for people who have slept rough.

If you see any of our Plaques email or Tweet a picture of yourself with the plaque and we will get it up on the website… there might even be a prize for the first person photographed at every site in an area!

If you are going to look out for our plaques be aware that rather than the usual eye level placement ours are down at street level to signify where people would be lying when using each location to sleep.  There are several plaques for you to find in each location; below is a shot of one from each area to give you a taster.

We believe we should commemorate not only those who have achieved fame in our society but everyone.  We also think those who are so often forgotten in life should be remembered in death… especially when you consider the terrible statistic that people who are homeless have a life expectancy of just 48 years.

…and if all this makes you want to help please click here and make a donation!

Many thanks to McGrath O’Toole and Ponderosa for all the hard work designing the plaques.

Inside housing have released some rough sleeping data based on 22 local authorities that they contacted.  Comparing the 2010 numbers with those they received there was a 40% increase (Leeds increasing from 6 to 11 in 2011).

I really hope this rise is not going to stimulate another drive to get the numbers down!  What is important here is the people who make up those numbers.  All to often we end up with government being slated for the numbers which results in an entirely number focused response.  We need to stop providing a bit of first aid at the scene of the accident and start some real treatment for those in need and to look a little further than the vehicles involved when thinking about future accident prevention.

The report can be found at:

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/care/rough-sleeping-figures-rocket-across-england/6520394.article

We recently got invited onto Radio Leeds to talk about the recent news story about general homelessness statistics in the region seem to be increasing.  It was a great opportunity to talk about the wider implications of the funding cuts and why the impact on our service users could be so devastating.

INTERVIEW  (some machines might have problems playing this clip)

One of the government criticisms often levelled at street based food giving charities is that they potentially enable people to sustain themselves to live on the streets.  It’s a bold claim but one that does need some consideration; it is certainly a concern of ours that we don’t simply offer food but use it as a means to engage and work towards change.

A story covered by the BBC today http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15683902 headlined ‘Benefit delays forces people to use food bank, charity says’, details that about a third of people using The Trussell Trust’s free food services were suffering benefit delays.  I think this starts to uncover the true complexity of dependence and reliance and how they relate to acceptability.  If it weren’t for charities like the Trussell Trust the news story would be about people being left with no food at all due to benefit delays.  So using the same argument as in the paragraph above are some charities enabling government to get away with not looking after some sections of society sufficiently to meet their basic needs?

The Children’s Society yesterday reported on the numbers of pre-teen runaways increasing (link below) and the risks that these young people face once they have fled their home or care. The report noted that a child runs away from home every five minutes in the UK and one in three of these will go unreported.

As a society we seem easily able to understand the impact that this type of thing has on children and how unacceptable it is that they are left in such a vulnerable position. The report also said:

“Agencies are unaware of the scale and nature of the problem and often fail to see runaways as children in need. Yet the report reveals that a quarter of them are forced to leave, often fleeing violence, abuse and chaos at home.”

For us we know these young people who miss out on a good start in life and then slip through the net of services all too often end up as adults with some fairly challenging support needs. The tough bit for us to swallow is when these people aren’t children anymore ‘as a society’ we seem to think differently. But they are the same people with the same traumatic pasts, they simply can’t be seen as ‘helpless’ anymore even though they are officially vulnerable adults.

A few hundred years ago these people were known as ‘sturdy beggars’, and were punished for begging when they were physically able to work. Today society is still obsessed with people’s physical ability to work and blames ‘choices’ to become drug or alcohol dependent adults or their irrational and problematic behaviour as the reason for their situation. As the above shows we have to get away from the physical and have more capacity to work with the emotional and psychological state if people in this situation are to find a way to reach their own potential.

http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/news-views/press-release/report-worrying-new-trends-increasing-pre-teen-and-male-runaways

There are three main strategies that we employ to engage with the group of people we support who have real challenges engaging with support services. They are a regular and committed presence on the streets, to approach people with simple human kindness and a patient / never give up attitude. 

Our worker in Bradford, Mat has been in post for a few months and is now starting to see the benefit of this approach:

There’s a guy I know only as Paul. I’ve seen him quite a lot as I’ve walked round Bradford, at projects or just walking round town.  During street outreach sessions I’ve been up to him to say hello, offer him a chat and a coffee and predictably he looked quite uncomfortable and left as quickly as possible.  Whenever I see him he’s usually on his own and almost always appears to be under the influence of alcohol.  Last night when I was visiting a project that offers free food to those who are homeless he came up to me, I didn’t even see him before he touched me on my arm and told me he had an appointment at a hostel, and if that didn’t work out he’d contact me.  I told him who I was but he said he knew.  

Reflecting on it with Jon, it’s difficult to attribute what has been important in getting Paul to want to do that.  The seemingly ineffective first meeting, the times he has seen me talking to other service users, or just being out there, are all important.  It demonstrates we are there for people and can be relied on and also means you catch opportunities like this when they arise.   Felt good though.

Jon, one of our support workers shares the experiences of a day ‘at the office’ in Huddersfield:

As I was walking down to the Mission to meet Tim I bumped in to Julie who I have been doing some short term work with regarding her abusive relationship and domestic violence. She had blood on her coat and clothes and what appeared to be a cut on the side of her head. I spent some time talking to her and tried to get her to either go to the doctors’ or to let me call her an ambulance due to the fact she had a head injury. She refused to go seek any medical help and insisted she was fine. While talking to her she informed me that she had been stabbed in the leg with a screwdriver repeatedly and had been attacked by her husband but she still refused to see a Dr or to have an ambulance called.

As I had an appointment to go to and I could not get anywhere with Julie and she insisted on staying in the park I went to meet Alan. I managed to book him an appointment at the Doctors’ in order to talk to the Dr about his mental health and the options available to him for treatment. While waiting for the appointment we managed to phone and restart a benefits claim for him and he is now just waiting for the statement to be posted ou.

I also called the addiction service for Alan to talk to his worker there about his community order. When I managed to talk to his worker there she told me that he had not been engaging, as we knew, and that all efforts on their part from home visits and outreach that they had been unable to re establish contact. His worker was keen to help me to help Alan re engage with herself, his
CPN and probation and gave me the names and contact details of his probation officer and his CPN. On contacting these I managed to establish that Alan has been discharged from the mental health team due to non engagement, however they are willing to re asses him if the need arises. I was also told by probation that if Alan re engages with either the addiction service or probation or both them he would not be in breach of his community order and they could work to sort things out for him. I made an appointment for Alan at Lifeline tomorrow at 10am, his worker agreed to contact me to let me know if he did or did not attend so that we can discuss ways to help him to engage.

At the doctor’s appointment Alan was told that he needed to start re engaging with the addiction service as his short to medium term problems were best addressed by them and that once engaging with them more medium and long term solutions could be considered for his mental health. Alan gave the doctors’ permission to share his information with me and to contact him through me. From this I learned that when Alan was discharged from hospital his assessment was that there were no mental or psychological needs and that he was not in need of any medication. I am not sure if this diagnosis/assessment is still accurate as Alan talks about hearing voices and has told me he is a paranoid schizophrenic. He does exhibit signs of increasing paranoia and has been very agitated since the passing of a friend of his.

Later on when I went back to the mission I was told that an ambulance had been called for Julie as she was looking to be very sleepy and people were worried about her injuries. I talked with the paramedics and because she refused to be taken to hospital there was little they could do except to inform us of the signs to be aware of with head trauma. After this Julie wanted to go to a housing appointment we had booked previously and so we went up and presented at housing.

Initially they processed the application as a domestic violence application but after going through the interview and checking details the only places they could offer were in Keighley or Rotheram, neither of which Julie wanted to go to for differing reasons. As she had been sleeping rough for 2 nights we managed to go down the rough sleeper process rather than domestic violence. Once this was done they found her some temporary accommodation in until such a time as they can give her a temporary flat.   Julie was over the moon with this and was very thankful that I had managed to get her somewhere to stay and said that although she still felt scared she did feel safer. I called into the mission with her on the way back in order to make a referral for clothes as the only ones she had were the ones she was wearing and they were all covered in blood. Julie appeared to be ok when I left but I’m still worried and will catch up with her again as soon as I can.

 Jon, Support Worker

We had a great soup-run in Leeds last night.  Our purpose is to provide a good atmosphere for people who are out on the streets –not to attract people to the streets.  The food we offer, from our perspective is a means to an end – we are not trying to feed the hungry but to engage the disengaged!

Once we have the right people there the idea is to have a pleasant and welcoming environment where anyone who attends feels valued and listened to.  From this point we can then signpost people to appropriate services.

Last night I had two great conversations; one with a guy who is living in a hostel and really starting to struggle with coping with life in there.  An hour of listening to his concerns about what his life had been in the past and what it is at present and some questions about what he wanted changed his focus from ‘sacking off the hostel and going back to rough sleeping’, to feeling able to speak to his key-worker about his worries and trying to make the placement work.

Another guy had gone into a mental health crisis a couple of days before and was feeling lost under the weight of his own anxiety and the complexity of 3 different services that were trying to meet his needs.  A long chat that switched from very serious consideration of his own mental health to ‘banter’, sport and taking the mick out of just how green our soup was, worked well for him.  All I had to provide was a straight man role for the banter and some genuine interest in his challenges.  He clearly needed to talk to someone who overtly had no agenda; just wanted to listen.  He obviously felt better for it and seemed to have started to make sense of his own feelings.

It was a fantastic evening: great company, great banter and great opportunities to encourage some people with some tough challenges to find ways forward that might just work for them.

I love my Job!

 In a recent survey conducted in day centres (http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/HiddenTruthAboutHomelessness_web.pdf ) 62% of the respondents stayed in a ‘hidden homeless’ setting the night before.  That means they were rough sleeping, staying with friends or sleeping in squats.  This snapshot data demonstrates that many of those who are homeless are not necessarily engaged with any formal services that are supporting them to address their situation. 

It’s fantastic that a survey has picked up on this point.  At Simon on the Streets we are working to address this point for those with the most complex support needs.  We find that for some people it’s not just the case that they happen to be getting missed by mainstream support, but are often avoiding it due to their history and how they feel about ‘the state’, formal settings and ‘normal people/society’.  Through street outreach work we specifically target this group and work hard to bridge the gap between them and the services that can meet their needs.

Clive