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…
Eat, sleep, take drugs, repeat.
I meet many people in my job, some of these people are stuck in a cycle of addiction. i often try to relate to them and think of ways in which they can break this cycle. Its taken me quite sometime to realise that without them having the correct motivation to change, i am wasting…
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…
28 chances later.
It’s very important when working with challenging people that the door is always left slightly ajar to retuning to services when you have no option but to exclude them. Over the years at The Wellspring I have had to bar hundreds of people. These are chellenging people, people with needs and issues that we are…
YOUTH HOMELESSNESS – Read all about it……
Youth homelessness is an increasingly concerning issue. Over the last few years I’ve recorded and documented a rise in youth homelessness, more and more young people under 25 are becoming homeless. Why? Well a multitude of different reasons but very commonly, easy reasons to address and fix. Fixing the issues of youth homelessness are often…
Wellspring Pure Radio December 2015
Wellspring feature on Pure Radio December 2015.
Well there is this Estonian chap….
A couple of years ago I become aware of a young man called Peter who was using The Wellspring everyday and was rough sleeping in one of the caves in Stockport. I got to know this young man by chatting to him by using Google translate as his English was not good. He told me he had…
Dont feed the habbit
Giving money to people begging in the street may seem like a decent generous thing to do, doing your bit to help someone out who is less fortunate than yourself is a selfless thing to do. However on average 90% of all money given to people in the street is spent on drugs or alcohol….
The dark days are over
I started working for The Wellspring charity around 15 years ago. I remember my first day very clearly. I walked up to the back of the building where one of the then management committee had arranged to meet me. I was a little early so sidestepped the 2 rather large dead rats in the car…
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…
Jonathan Billings .com 