Issue 63 - The Pilgrim - August 2017 - The newspaper of the Archdiocese of Southwark

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Feature The Pilgrim August 2017 Providing help when people hit rock bottom The Manna Society runs a day centre for the homeless in Melior Street, near London Bridge Station. Its director Bandi Mbubi explains how it helps those who have fallen on hard times In our last snapshot survey, in January this year, we counted 145 people who came to our day centre, near London Bridge. In the last two years we have been in our new building, numbers have fluctuated between 130 and 170 people, from day to day. Whereas in the old building, which was more spacious, we usually catered for 150 people to 200. Having said that, apart from the overall number of people, other statistics have remained more or less the same. Like in previous surveys, we found that about 60 per cent of our service-users are homeless, out of whom 40 per cent sleep rough and 10 per cent find hospitality with their friends. Of course, not everyone who comes to us is homeless. Roughly 25 per cent stay in social housing and 15 per cent live in hostels. For many who continue to use our centre, even after they have been rehoused, we remain an important source of support and accompaniment. We try not to judge but instead we try to accept people as they are; made in the image of God. We are open every day, including Saturday and Sunday. For us, it is not just a question of finding accommodation for homeless people, but it is also accompanying them during their journey of resettlement. It is clear to us that a home is more than a building. It is where we sleep and eat, entertain friends and family, think and play and losing a place means having to live without everything which goes with it. To be in such a situation for a significant amount of time can be very debilitating. It can affect the way we see ourselves and the world and the way the world looks at us. At the Manna Centre we address people’s basic physical and emotional needs. Altogether we offer seven services to those who turn to us for help. By far our most popular service is food. We serve breakfast as people first come in at 8.30am in the morning till 11.30am. It usually consists of a sandwich from Pret A Manger people first come in and porridge which we serve at 10am. Lunch begins to be served from 11.30am till we close at 1.30pm in the afternoon. Throughout the day, there is always tea and coffee. For most of our service-users, this is their main meal and we are glad we are able to offer it to them. It goes without saying how important our shower facilities are to homeless people. They are in constant use. Alongside this service, twice per week, on Mondays and Wednesdays, people get a change of clothes. We are lucky that we have a dedicated and reliable team of volunteers who manage our clothing Are you looking for: Prayer Community Spirituality Service Is God calling you to the Discalced Carmelites? Please contact Fr John at: johnmcgowan50@gmail.com Tel: 07598 913986 A volunteer’s story By Sarah Coates A year ago I started volunteering at The Manna Society working in the kitchen. I had no idea what to expect and was fairly apprehensive. I had had a very positive experience working at Crisis for Christmas and wanted to do something similar on a regular basis. I looked around at various charities but chose The Manna Society because, just like Crisis, they provide a wide variety of services including benefits advisors, healthcare, hot showers, a clothing store, as well as food. Its’ approach feels more like a helping hand rather than a hand out. So there I was on a grey January day standing in a lovely warm kitchen feeling decidedly unqualified to do anything at all. I was welcomed, shown around and given some rather lovely pink marigold washing up gloves and then taught how to wash up on an industrial scale. Limited supplies of plates and cutlery means that everything needs to be washed and returned to the eating area at speed so that everyone (and I mean everyone) gets fed. Irina, the chef, works a daily miracle. Standard meals are supplemented with donated extras from individuals, markets and businesses. This is recycling at its creative best. There is no typical volunteer; ages and backgrounds vary. We are a random group of individuals brought together because we each have a few hours to spare and have had just enough courage to think that maybe we could be useful. And it works. The Manna Society is a welcoming, inspiring and valued project. It is a privilege to feel part of something so precious. And if my few hours can help it to continue to be that place of hope for the guests that it serves then I am delighted to roll up my sleeves and put on those marigolds! Page 6
The Pilgrim August 2017 Feature Anyone can become homeless store and keep it running for people to use. Our team of two full-time and a part-time housing and welfare advice workers do wonders as they see over 1300 people per year. Out of those who seek help from our advice team, at least 500 people do it in housing-related issues and over half of them are placed in some kind of housing. Increasingly, we are seeing people who though working full-time are not able to meet their housing costs and are having to rely on us to find affordable accommodation. Thankfully, we are still able to pass on furniture we receive from supporters at very low costs to our clients. Although, the actual furniture is kept off-site as we have the space for it in our new building. A challenge for many homeless people is accessing medical care as often GPs ask for proof of address before they can have you in their books. Thankfully, we have nursepractitioners who hold their surgeries twice per week, on Mondays and Fridays, to deal with people’s physical needs. Similarly, we have a community mental health team, called the START Team, who assist people who have mental health problems. Once every fortnight, we meet together with them and others to agree jointaction on mutual clients. With the School of Osteopathy, we get students in their final years, accompanied by their more experienced supervisors, to administer treatment to our serviceusers. A chiropodist also comes on the first and third Tuesday of every month to treat people’s feet. A computer has long stopped being a luxury item for most of us. Yet for many homeless people, it still is. So in 2011 we introduced a computer suite for people to use for educational, leisure and vocational pursuit. Whilst many homeless people now have smart phones, the cost of internet however can be prohibitive to them. Our computer suite gives people the opportunity to access the internet, most days, from 10.30am to 1pm. Altogether, we have 12 paid staff, two of whom are part-time, and about 60 volunteers per year to operate. The Archdiocese of Southwark generously provides us with the building free of charge. They have been doing so since we first opened in 1982. The wider Christian community helps us too with money and food donations, especially during harvest festival and other Christian festivals. Grant-making trusts are an important source of income for us with some private companies who donate money to us. The Government funding we receive comes from the London Borough of Southwark which accounts for 12 per cent of our total budget. In the past five years, rough sleeping has doubled across England. In London alone, around a thousand people are sleeping rough. Budget cuts have meant that there has been a severe reduction of supported housing accommodations for people with multiple and complex needs. It is an uphill battle to significantly reduce homelessness. With your continued support however, the load feels lighter. By Karolina Muszynska The advice service at The Manna Day Centre is available seven days per week. It is a mostly drop in service, offered on ‘first come first serve basis’. We are quite busy here and for those who need assistance it often means coming very early in the morning to make sure that they will be seen. It is not a perfect system but we believe that thanks to that it is equally accessible to everyone. We serve a population that has quite a chaotic lifestyle due to their unstable housing situation and different support needs. Our customers do not always find easy to keep their appointments, therefore we decided that ‘drop in’ system will would be the most efficient. We have two full time workers and one part-time worker doing the advice job. Each of us see around six people per day. What do we do here? I like to say that we are trying to deal with whatever people bring to us. It does not mean that we are omnipotent, but we will always strive do our best to help and if it is beyond our competences, we will signpost customer to the appropriate service. The main areas of our work are housing and welfare rights. We work together with various housing providers (hostels, housing co-ops, private landlords, night shelters) to help those in need of housing. When a homeless person comes to us for assistance our first step is to assess their situation to determine the best course of action. For example: we need to find out their immigration status as that determines their right to public funds, we have to to check their age, reason for homelessness, local connection, funds available for upfront costs, support needs particular person may have, entitlement to benefits etc. Once all of the above is established we can start looking for a suitable accommodation and this not an easy task at all. Firstly, because there is shortage of affordable housing in London in general, secondly most of the landlords asks for money to cover at least the rent in advance and not many of our clients have savings at all. Therefore, another part of our job is to find funding for upfront costs. In terms of our welfare benefits work we assist our customers to make benefit claims, we help them to request reviews of unsuccessful decision and we do general advocacy on their behalf. It is a very time consuming work as these days most of the claims are done online and require good level of computer literacy, which is not a skill that our customers often posses. Apart from those two main areas we also do all sorts of other things like helping people to deal with debts, linking them with employment services, reporting stolen items to the police, getting copies of lost documents and ID replacements, helping to get references, applying for national insurance numbers etc. As I mentioned before we try to deal with whatever is brought to us. Who are our customers? They really come from all walks of life. In my work I have learnt that everyone can become homeless. Often it begins with just a set of unfortunate circumstances, e.g.: losing a job, relationship or health problems and than things accelerate. Once a person become homeless it is nearly impossible to live a normal live and very difficult to come back to it. Often when people think about homeless they have in mind a picture of a rough sleeper. In my work I realised that rough sleepers are just a small part of homeless population. Most of the newly homeless people will try to avoid sleeping on the streets as it is dangerous and scary. First they will try something that is called in our jargon 'sofa surfing'. It means that they move from friend to friend to to spend a night. When friends are not not able to help any longer, people starts to spend nights on night buses or train stations to get some sleep in a safe place and not to attract attention. The Pilgrim is now online, making it possible to read all the editions since it was launched in 2011. To view it, visit the diocesan website and click on a lick on the left hand side of the page. www.rcsouthwark.co.uk Page 7
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Issue 63 - The Pilgrim - August 2017 - The newspaper of the Archdiocese of Southwark

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