My colleague Dean is telling me about his day; his harrowing day. Most of it has been spent at the hospital supporting Samantha. Samantha is 31 and she has been addicted to heroin since the age of 15. Her weakened immune system has led to the onset of septicaemia. Dean found her in her usual rough sleeping spot lying in he own faeces and called an ambulance. Samantha has lived the life of a homeless drug addict for the last decade. All her friends are from the street. Today she was visited in hospital by her boyfriend who is also a heroin user. He is found by her bed with a syringe, surreptitiously trying to inject her. There is uproar. Nurses and security are called and he is bundled out of the ward. Dean arrives at the height of the commotion and succeeds in calming Samantha, preventing her, dressed in a hospital gown, following her boyfriend out of the building and back to sleeping rough. The usually imperturbable Dean is dejected. ‘She has lost the will to live’ h
From 1999-2018 I was CEO of homelessness charity Thames Reach. From 2018-20 I worked at MHCLG to deliver rough sleeping and homelessness programmes. This blog seeks to bring to life the complexities, dilemmas, set-backs and triumphs that are part of trying to help people escape homelessness. It aims to tell the stories of the inspirational people I have met in my work, many of whom have faced homelessness and from whom I have learnt a lot.