Warm hands — My two days with homeless communities
By: Pete Nuckley
Tags: Housing, Homeless, Services, Homelessness, Health

Warm hands — My two days with homeless communities

These are my personal reflections (and therefore not necessarily the opinion of Good Things Foundation or NHS Digital) on some of the most eye opening and emotional user research I’ve ever been involved in. Pete Nuckley Feb 18, 2019·6 min read

Warm hands

I was sat in a homeless day centre in Birmingham talking to people about their lives and what is most important to them. It had already been quite emotional learning about their experiences, who they trust and what they need. Then Emily (not her real name) said;

“What have I got to worry about? Right now, talking to you I have warm hands.”

Which started a thread all about immediate needs vs long term needs. Emily’s hands are warm, she is ok for the foreseeable future (that future is about 30 minutes from now — no longer) so who cares about after that?

This is a thread that ran through the two days.

Did you know….that in Birmingham there are support structures in place for people who are homeless and they are a 10 minute walk from the city centre? However, if you are homeless it isn’t in your immediate interest to go there and get support. Because, if you leave your pitch (the place you have battled to get because you know there is footfall there and you can at least earn a couple of pound to see you through the day) then someone else will jump in and you can’t get that back. Read the same for getting a bed for the night. There aren’t many places to get a bed in Birmingham if you are homeless, but even if you could get one for one night — would you give up the good doorway that you can keep for longer for the sake of one night.

I’m a firm believer in the maxim “your system is perfectly designed for the outcomes it gets”. And this system is broken. It’s forcing people into impossible decisions. It’s not helping those who most need help because it doesn’t understand them or their lives. It’s one god damned silo of funding after another that doesn’t solve anything.

Tim (not his real name) was talking about priorities.

“Everyone’s priority is housing”

I can talk all day about health, jobs, support etc but Tim can only think about housing.

“I couldn’t even engage properly with rehab [for alcohol addiction] because I didn’t have a house for when I left. People said that would be sorted later, but that worry just means I can’t concentrate on getting better”

Tim says that the support structures think it is a simple, sequential thing.

Stop addiction > get housing > find work

Bollocks! Utter, utter rubbish! These things aren’t in isolation. Support is needed for everything and it isn’t linear. Tim battles his demons every day in spite of a system not with the help of it. Tim is braver than I’ll ever be.

Did you know…that in the day centre (where someone can get a cup of tea and a shower) people form cliques? If you have a drug problem then you don’t sit with the people who have an alcohol problem. There is a tension between the two. And yet we tend to lump ‘homelessness provision’ together like there’s no difference in circumstance or context. The day centre gets genuinely scary around lunch time as people queue for food. Arguments break out and threats are made. Particularly with people who you don’t sit with.

One of these arguments prompted a conversation about anger. Emily talked me through her experience;

“I tie a knot. If you help me for 5 minutes when I have this knot then we can untie it. If you don’t help me then I’ll tie a second knot. By the time I’ve tied 4 or 5 knots then they can’t be untied and I’ll do something I’ll regret”

Emily needs support when she needs it. Little and often. Not scheduled in for 3 weeks time. In fact — to expand on this point. How the hell do we think booking someone in for a housing/ jobcentre/ doctors appointment is meant to work for people who are trying to just survive until tomorrow? Chaotic lives increase the amount of appointments you have. By definition you can’t make all of these appointments because your life is bloody chaotic. And to add to this crap situation the homeless community are threatened with things like — “if you don’t show up then you are taken off our books/ your benefit will be stopped etc etc”. Here’s another little gem on this (read sarcasm)… people are put into temporary accommodation with the threat that if you abuse alcohol or drugs whilst there then we will take this roof from over your head. That person is then put in a block of flats with other people who are struggling with drug and alcohol addiction and vulnerable to dealers taking advantage of them all together. Jesus Christ!!

Night shelter in London

Did you know…. that strangers are not trusted. They might be the police or immigration and trying to inflict more harm on people so they aren’t trusted. In fact the only reason I was trusted there is because of a kind of deflected trust that was passed to me from one of the workers in there. Because they said I was ok then I was ok.

Let’s move down to London where I was lucky enough to spend some time at a night shelter there.

The biggest takeaway from this was how everybody in there

“didn’t want to be a burden”

They are under the assumption that seeing a Doctor makes them a burden. We have made a system where Tom (not his real name) spent two years folding his 6ft 2 frame into the back seat of his car to sleep. His knees are agony. He works 6 days per week mowing the grass in graveyards and this is hurting his shoulder. But… he doesn’t want to be a burden so won’t see the doctor. In fact he is grateful that he has a bed for a couple of weeks in this shelter.

I spoke to Laurence (not his real name). Laurence hasn’t seen a doctor for 30 years. He has been sleeping rough on and off for all that time. Laurence feels that he is a burden and therefore even though a GP visits the centre once per week and could physically sit next to Laurence and he wouldn’t talk to them.

A note on this GP. He is incredible! He also understands that a GP brings a certain power dynamic to an appointment which doesn’t help the people who visit this night shelter. To prove this he said that when he books people (from this shelter) into appointments at his practice they rarely show up. When he comes here the attendance rate increases by a factor of 4. This is because of two things

This is more of a neutral ground People know that he is there for a block of time every Wednesday. They don’t have to book appointments for 3 weeks from now and try and keep them.

GP visits on a Wednesday

One of the most upsetting parts of my visit to London was the lack of resentment that people had. I was getting angry, crying and cursing through the session on their behalf (I realise how patronising that sounds). There was a sense of acceptance that this is their lot in life. That existing from cold night to cold night was all that they were worth. Even with the incredible people working at the shelter helping them they still thought it was ‘just the way things are’. They even spoke of how others have it worse.

These two days have taken a big toll on me. This is a rambling post that I’m not sure what it’s point is other than to get this stuff out of my head. These insights will form part of something but for now, I just needed to tell you how shit things are. How we keep getting things wrong and how we’ve broken people into submission.

I’ll leave you with a thought that Tim said. Tim has battled his way back from the brink. He has been enjoying some drama classes as a creative outlet. I clumsily asked Tim if “drama had given him some confidence to move forward with other things”

Confidence isn’t something that drama can give me. No one owns my confidence, it isn’t theirs to give. Drama helped me find MY confidence.

Not sure why that is important just yet…. but I am sure it is.