Hi, my name is Andrew and I live in Oxford, England. I have been asked to write about my experience of homelessness and the process of getting out of it. This is not an academic paper so there will not be endless quotes and citations, merely, my experience and that of others I have met along the way. At the end of this post, there will be some suggested articles for further reading. I hope you find this informative and that it will encourage you to help those in need and the charities that support them.
Coping with paperwork and ‘system’ expectations from a sleeping bag
For those still on the street, your mind may well be elsewhere, you may have got to the point of not caring and being expected to function as a person does in a normal house, with a phone, laptop and some sort of filing system and probably the kitchen table to work on is frankly absurd. The hostel and the St Mungo’s team (in the background the local church too) helped me get through. Many street people battle with certain medical conditions that can control their lives and spending habits – mental health, drugs and alcohol. These are illnesses and not easily overcome without support and the right conditions. Being on the street does not really qualify. Free burner phones are often lost, stolen or swapped. Expecting them to be charged up and with enough credit is frankly a pipe dream. And yet the system expects and requires people to comply and cope. Failure to comply can often lead to sanctions and extra work for the support workers who are already overworked. Sometimes the system feels like the old-fashioned school system, you got something wrong and you were told to hold out your hand for a smack – showing my age here.
The YHA and people around me saved me, and with a lot of help, I got through but I am certain that without it, I would eventually have gotten to a point of being cut off from “normal” life.
The workload
For most of us, and certainly from my experience of life until it went wrong, I only had the occasional serious problem and for the most part, I could afford help if I needed it or could cope myself. From this “normality” it is easy to blame people who have fallen into homelessness. It is easy to assign fault – in my case to say “you should have asked for help”, or “you should have gone to the GP”. When your mental health has collapsed you just cannot do this. So, then I look at the “workload” you get when you are homeless and trying, with much help, to recover.
Now a person may have to deal with a long list of different departments that do not always work well together, if at all.
DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) for benefits claims including UC (Universal Credite) and PIP (Personal Independence Payment). Both of these require a lot of form filling for the higher levels that are triggered by bad health. The same person can fill out forms using different words and can either succeed or fail in being awarded the extra help purely by the way they completed the form. Oddly, the DWP demands Sick Notes (now called Fit Notes) which in the context of a normal business would be accepted as evidence you cannot work. Not good enough for the DWP, you have to have these Sick Notes (GP time spent filling them in) but they will be ignored in terms of an award until a special assessment unit has done their stuff. So, in effect, the DWP demands GP involvement from the NHS but then duplicates the work through a bureaucratic process. The higher level of UC which is called LCWRA (Limited Capability for Work and Related Activities) even when awarded it is not paid for the first three months of the claim. Guys, if you have a genuine claimant, this long-winded process has just proven it, why do you not pay from the first date of the claim? It is genuine? Your system said so.
NHS is involved for all medical conditions but has notably different service values and processes for physical issues as against mental ones. With cancer, my GP arranged an appointment at the hospital. With much of the mental health side you are “sign-posted”. You have to self-refer which can be very challenging, why not just refer people? As someone who has struggled to cope with daily life being asked to go down the “sign-posting” route is actually a barrier. “Just turn up at the drop-in centre” when you have agoraphobia, asking someone to “drop in” in one of the busier parts of town does not even make sense. One of the very supportive St Mungo’s staff – ex Army and ex Police – made a call for me to a centre for “Complex Needs”, when he asked about lead time, he could not believe the reply and asked for confirmation, at that stage it was twenty-six months to get on a time limited course. If that was my only chance, I very much doubt I would have survived. On one occasion I was given a questionnaire of 119 questions. “We want you to complete this so we can get to know you better”. When I had gone through it, as I pointed out somewhat angrily, there was not one single question about whether anything has been done to me. Had I suffered any form of abuse? The country wonders why some people turn to drugs and drink, it is to block out years, sometimes decades, of pain that no one will listen to.
The NHS also gets a lot of call-outs that if these things were handled on a timely basis would never have happened. They also get extra work, in my case, take three examples:
Firstly, I am prone to falls, even in broad daylight, because of dissociation, they have had to deal with a broken arm bone and follow up therapy.
Secondly, because of untreated anxiety (it is being worked on now), I have for years been unable to get radiotherapy which requires consistent treatment for a month.
Thirdly, when I got gallbladder related pancreatitis, not only could I not have called the ambulance but I had to “block” a bed for three weeks instead of quick in/ out stabilize / operate because I had no home to go to.
Some say it is not a true cost as the service would have been there regardless of need. Wrong, go talk to people who have had to wait longer because someone ahead of them is “blocking” the system.
I was going to give a list of departments that impact homeless people in their lives but this could soon turn into a book but just a quick list – Social Services (including child services in some situations), we have DWP and the NHS, there are also for those with criminal issues, prison and probation, the courts, the police. When we come to pipelines, see below, those with broken childhoods can include education and social services. Oh, and don’t forget HMRC if you have failed to file from when you were trying to run a business and now are in no place to provide any paperwork.
There are a lot of good men and women working in these services but your experience can depend enormously on the baggage you carry. I am very lucky, I seldom swear and am generally mild mannered so responses are usually positive, especially when I am struggling. Now take a person who is used to “effing and blinding” in their normal speech. They can get into serious trouble for swearing, then add in people who have anger management issues. You see where I am coming from. This is a recipe for things to get out of control. Use of language, especially in official documents/situations, trauma informed training, can all make a big difference for both sides and of course to those trying to help them.
The chaos and complexity which is often a way of life on the streets, needs to be factored in. Expectations must be moderated. Sanctioning only makes things worse unless someone is genuinely trying to swing the lead. The frustration and desperation in people’s lives needs to be seen to appreciate just what a potent mix you can be dealing with. This is why the hard work of outreach teams, support workers and other specialist groups from big charities like CRISIS and St Mungo’s, down to local ones is so very important in providing help and support.
Pipelines and revolving doors
There is a very real and welcome plan to try and end homelessness by the end of this (UK) parliament. As much as we all want to see it happen, it will not until the pipelines and revolving doors are resolved.
Pipelines, routes into homelessness are deeply embedded and produce new homeless every single year. Some examples include, broken childhoods which often result in low attainment in education, mental health and other issues. Many people with this background end up on the street. Abusive relationships whether as children or adults can also do so. Mental health leading to complications with substance abuse or the other way around is also key. A survey that St Mungo’s carried out earlier this year found 71% of clients reported a mental health issue. I respectfully suggest this is understated as many with bad issues around mental health / substance abuse will have effectively opted out as they could not be bothered to participate. The cost living crisis will add to the inflow. Until the taps are turned off by better provision for these and other groups there will be a steady inflow.
Revolving doors are where people never really exit homelessness or do, but come back in. Examples include, prisons – a place which often traumatises and degrades people even more and where drugs and alcohol (hooch) are often freely available. Move-ons where the place people have gone to is in-appropriate. For example, sending someone who has just been through rehab to a housing unit where drink and drugs are rife, is a recipe for failure. Sending someone who is not ready to budget into the private rented sector where costs are out of control for those who can budget, is not a good idea. If that person cannot maintain their rent they will soon be back on the street.
Housing First
Is a very good initiative, and while not for everyone, it will help many by reducing the chaos and complexity of lives and giving a chance for resources to be focussed. The so-called wrap-around support packages will need monitoring as they will vary in their impact and quality by area. One-size-fits-all must be avoided. For example, I might need six weeks of support for something, another person six months and if it is strictly fixed at two months, I get more than enough help and another “fails” because they needed more time. A lot of properties are in very poor condition and expecting people who are struggling to cope with day-to-day life, to then put them in a position where they are in damp, poorly insulated, properties and then make them pay the highest cost electricity by putting them on prepayment meters is callous. To do so in the midst of some of the worst inflation is at best thoughtless and worst downright cruel. You do not expect someone getting over a long-term and debilitating illness to carry weights and run a marathon. So please do not do so here.
A note from Expert Link
Expert Link network member, Andrew, has given permission to share his name and story in five parts, one each day across the week to mark #WorldHomelessDay and #WorldMentalHealthDay. Sign up to the mailing list to get the links to the full 5 part series:
- My journey with mental health and homelessness
- Sleeping on benches
- Getting help with homelessness and mental health
- Mental health and homelessness – How can government and services help?
- Involving Lived Experience to end homelessness
Suggested Reading
The Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping – Progress Report September 2022
CRISIS – All-Party Parliamentary Group for Ending Homelessness
St Mungos – Stop The Scandal [Focus is on Mental Health & Rough Sleeping]
St Mungos – Article In Support of the Kerslake Report
Please Note: At Expert Link, we strive to amplify the voices of those within our communities. The views represented in this blog represent the individual author independently and not Expert Link as a whole.
