Vulnerable people are often forced into situations that feed upon their vulnerability, they make poor lifestyle choices that often lead to them suffering abuse. Because of the poor choices that these people make, their vulnerability increases and they can end up in some very disturbing situations. Recently a vulnerable young lady i know reasonably…
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If at first you don’t succeed….
Keeping motivated and focused on being productive with challenging people is incredibly difficult. it can be frustrating when you don’t seem to be making any progress with a person you are trying to support, i guess we have a picture in our mind of how we would like that support to go and when reality…
Is the Health Service Mental?
Mental Health services in Stockport have suffered funding cuts over the last few years, with more cuts likely to be in the post. Cutting these essential services is just plain mental. This morning a man in his 30’s presented as homeless at The Wellspring, this is someone we have worked with in the past so…
Don’t move them on, help them to move on…
Begging, sitting on the floor within 5m of ATMs or shops, and legal highs have all been banned in Stockport town centre under a new legal order. Police and the borough’s council have secured the protection order after months of trouble. However, there are now fears that the move targets homeless people. Jonathan Billings from…
How not to Fundraise
Fundraising is becoming an ever increasing difficult task, as more and more charity’s have faced funding cuts, found grant funding harder to come by and have found themselves trying to compete with the big charity’s for the man in the streets pound. All the major national charity’s have whole departments of dedicated professional fundraisers. They have Army’s of…
Reach out.
For a few years I’ve been involved in community outreach, visiting rough sleeping sites, campsites, squats and other places that homeless people migrate towards. I have always struggled to understand the appeal of such places to homeless people. Why do people choose to frequent places that are often dangerous, cold, wet and unclean? In the…
The window of opportunity
Over the years I’ve met so many people who have been so entrenched with problems that they could not possibly contemplate possitive change. I’ve always thought of these people as bricked up windows, people who are going though the motions and plodding along with no real intent to do anything other than whatever it is…
Legal highs. I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want…..
legal highs have been available to buy for many years and up until around 2 years ago they were relatively unknown and harmless. Certainly the use of them in the homeless community was more or less none existant. Today in 2015 they are rife. Many homeless people have taken to using these drugs on a…
That last conversation
A wise worker once told me many years ago that you never know when your last conversation with anyone of our client group will be. This is something that has stayed with me and very much influenced my way of working with homeless people. The statement is so true, you just never know when your…
Homelessness is a symptom
Living on the streets in the UK is not an easy experience, I see first hand on a daily basis the trails and tribulations, the pain and sorrow that homeless people endure daily. Everyday can be such a chore, a drawn out process of eat, drink, rough sleep, repeat. Over the years of having the…
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