‘During an evening outreach session my colleagues and I walked past a man sitting cross legged on the ground with his head on the pavement. His face was swollen and marked and there was an empty bottle of wine next to him. He was surrounded by food which passers- by had left and it looked as if he had been like that for some time. So we made a judgement call and tried to wake him up, when he did not respond we decided to call an ambulance in case he was overdosing. He woke up more as the ambulance was on its way and started to chat with us. He has not slept in three nights and had been sleeping rough. A few nights ago he had been beaten up by a gang of lads who had jumped on his head and broken his cheek bone. He was due to have surgery on this the next day. I phoned the out-of-hours hostel and their first question was, ‘is he intoxicated because we won’t be letting him in if he is?’ I was perturbed by the question of intoxication and phoned the hostel stated that he was due to have surgery and was found passed out on the pavement half an hour ago in a vulnerable state. He did not appear unduly intoxicated. ‘We’ll be able to tell’ was the reply. I did not see this as the most important issue in the situation and I found this attitude very judgemental.
Posters have appeared all around the city where I work, with the message that by giving money to beggars you are only feeding their drug addiction, as if to put the responsibility of their addiction on to the people who drop the odd pound here and there. So is it up to the people who have money to give, to dictate what people who do not, spend it on? This attitude is belittling and judgemental, our guys know that, they don’t generally feel proud to be begging – they’re in desperate situations. I don’t condone it or condemn it, I’m not here to tell people what to do, I’m here to understand their situations and how that impacts. When I am sat with a service user on the pavement talking I am aware of the looks and double takes that happen from people passing; this kind of weighing up and scrutinising happens to our service users on a daily basis. This judgement from society often becomes internalised.
When people judge each other they are falsely putting themselves above others, how do they know what they would do in another person’s shoes? And what right do they have to decide how others should be conducting their lives?