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

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
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