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THE ISSUE
‘I won’t tell my little boy about life on the streets’
TheChronicle March 28, 2008
JP020306VAGRANTS
TheChronicle March 28, 2008
that to your baby?” Kerry hopes to work in a hostel when her son is older, but for now wants to make the most of being with him. She adds: “I won’t tell him anything about being on the streets, I don’t want him to know about what happened there. “My boyfriend wants him to be a footballer but I won’t pressurise him, I just want him to know right from wrong and be happy.”
a place for the night, but a place back into the world of work.” Chester City Council Principal Housing Officer Paul Simpson said: “One of the main problems at the hostel was that in two rooms there were three beds which didn’t give people their own space. “This grant will enable us to extend the facilities in those bedrooms.” Chief Executive of Cath, Robert Bisset, added: “If you asked an adult in the mainstream community to share a room with a stranger they would refuse, so I believe it is just and proper that money is spent on the hostel to give people individual sleeping spaces that we would all expect ourselves.”
the rough sleepers head count
EXTRA funding for a homeless facility in Chester has been announced. Crispin House emergency night shelter in Nicholas Street has been awarded £55,000 through the Places of Change programme. The hostel is run by Chester Aid to the Homeless (Cath) charity and can house up to eight men. The money, which is given out by the Department of Communities and Local Government, will be used to upgrade hostel dormitories into single rooms and develop existing medical facilities along with education and training. The idea of the grant is to transform hostels into “not just
Work is expected to start this year. The hostel grant comes weeks after funding was announced for a six-bed women’s hostel in Blacon. Currently there are no emergency beds for women in Cheshire. Chester City Council recognised the need for a direct-access women’s hostel in its Homelessness Strategy for 2003-08 but missed its pledge to establish the facility by 2005. Now a suitable site for women’s services has been identified in Blacon Avenue and initial funding has been provided by Muir Housing Association. The centre is likely to be up and running by April 2009.
Night shelter given funds boost
LIFE CHANGES: Kerry, who did not want to be named or pictured, says her life has been transformed by the birth of her baby son in November.
my baby’s hand, so I have put that in his trust fund for his future.” She adds: “I still go to Aqua House for rehab and they were worried I might go back to drinking but I haven’t even thought about it – I don’t have time. My health visitor couldn’t believe I had been on the streets. “There are some girls on the streets who get pregnant and carry on taking drugs. I can’t stand that – why would you do
Every week we turn the spotlight on one of the important issues........... in the community
ife has drastically changed for 31-year-old Kerry in the last 18 months.
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She fell into homelessness after taking parental responsibility for her 10-year-old brother when she was 24. Unable to cope, she turned to drink, her brother was taken into care and she was evicted. Currently, Chester has no emergency beds for women found rough sleeping so Kerry’s then-boyfriend was given a hostel place, but she was turned away. Charity workers in Chester express immense frustration that they can provide good facilities for men but often the best they can do for a woman is give her a sleeping bag and point her toward the Rows. Capital funding has now been secured for a six-bed women’s hostel in Blacon but funding for services and staff must still be found and the hostel is unlikely to open before next April. When I tell Kerry about the planned hostel, she says: “I’m pleased they are finally doing something but it has taken too long. Maybe if I had been given a chance to get off the streets earlier I wouldn’t have stayed there so long.” Kerry talks almost fondly about her time on the streets, but admits that she got too
accustomed to the way of life. She said: “I suppose I did choose to stay after a while. You get to know people, I had just lost my brother and I was lonely. “The time flew and I realised I would end up dead or in jail. You get to a certain point and realise you have to get out.” She was “overjoyed” to find out she was pregnant last March because doctors said her drinking habit might have stopped her conceiving. She moved into accommodation for homeless families during her pregnancy and was given her flat in December when her baby was one month old. Workers from Chester Aid to the Homeless gave her nappies and furniture and still visit her regularly. She says: “When you are on the streets you feel invisible, I feel normal again now. “When you are homeless you don’t pay attention to the normal people in the street, it is like they are in your front room, you feel like the streets belong to you. “Sitting at the bus stop last night looking at the people around me, I could pick out the homeless people a mile off. I realised that is how they must have looked at me. “My old neighbours from Newtown and my friends from school will speak to me again now. You don’t realise how many people don’t speak to you when you are homeless. “A woman yesterday put £5 in
STREET SCENE: The official rough sleepers head count took place on Thursday across Cheshire. See next week’s Chronicle for a report on how the count is carried out and what it showed.
As volunteers across Cheshire take part in the Government’s homelessness count, REBECCA EDWARDS talks to a former rough sleeper about how her life turned around when she became a mum
Saturday 29th March
When The Chronicle first featured her story at the beginning of 2007, she had just moved into the Milestones hostel on Egerton Street, Chester after four years trapped in a city housing void that left her on the streets. I interviewed her in a stuffy basement kitchen and she told me how she slept on the Rows until she was pistol-whipped by a drunk, then moved to a railway arch near the racecourse. In February, she introduced me proudly to her fourmonth-old son and gave me a tour of her small but cosy housing trust flat in Newton. “They offered me two flats but I chose this one because it has got a little garden, so I’ve got to find a lawnmower soon,” she said. She adds with a smile: “I never thought I’d be talking about getting a lawnmower.” Kerry grew up in Newtown and went to Kingsway High School where she got Bs and Cs in her GCSEs and a GNVQ.
“I realised I would end up dead or in jail. You get to a certain point and realise you have got to get out.” KERRY, 31
Don’t miss next week’s Chronicle for a full report on
GOING GREEN: Chester Catholic High School student Bronwyn O’Neill, prize winner in a recent competition to design a green leaflet and runners up Callum Boyd, Samantha Jones and Erick Bannerman. TC140308design-003
Pupils go green at school
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A CHESTER Catholic High School student is encouraging her classmates to think of greener ways to get to school. Year 9 student Bronwyn O’Neill won a competition to design a leaflet to encourage green transport and a healthy lifestyle. Her prize was a Nintendo Wii and runners up Callum Boyd, Year 8, Samantha Jones, Year 7 and Erick Bannerman, Year 9, all received cash prizes. The prizes were bought with money raised from recycling mobile phones. The school’s thriving eco-team encouraged students to bring in a disused phone in return for wearing their own clothes for the day. The competition was organised by teacher Tony Crewe, the school’s environmental education coordinator.