Category: Irish Examiner

The following two articles appeared in the Irish Examiner on Monday, September 13, 2010.

Nothing has changed for outsiders

By Jennifer Hough, Irish Examiner
Monday, September 13, 2010

AFTER almost 35 years in operation, homeless charity Trust has had to cease its “open door” policy because of violence, drugs and racism.

Trust founder Alice Leahy said there was often extreme violence on the part of people frustrated because of their inability to have their needs met.

Many people, she said, were addicted to drugs, including alcohol, and the increase in the number of people coming from abroad, particularly from Eastern Europe, had led to a lot of racism within the services.

Ms Leahy said two reports which she wrote about homeless people in the 1970s showed how little has changed in 35 years. She said the reports were a painful reminder nothing is changing for the outsider in society, and “a sharp reminder” of how much remains to be done.

The 1974 report, which Leahy wrote while working as a nurse and deputy director of Simon Ireland, led directly to the setting up of Trust the following year. The report highlights problems created by the lack of co-ordination between medical professionals and the voluntary sector – a gap that Trust has filled over the years but, according to Ms Leahy, the challenge is now growing rather than diminishing.

The 1976 report was completed in the first full year of Trust’s existence. Extracts from the report show how little has changed since:

“Men in their 20s and 30s – this body of mainly young men makes up the largest percentage of the single homeless population.

“Many have had little education and are unskilled.

“Many come from city ghetto areas. They are the product of broken families and deprived communities. A number will have had brief contact with the law, usually in relation to petty crimes. They come from backgrounds whose hallmarks are appalling despair, chronic unemployment and an inability to make ends meet.

“Factors such as loneliness, apathy, depression, the inability to form ongoing relationships, the misery of the dole constantly threatening the ability of the individual to remain in any way integrated and capable of coping.

“Many are crying out for human understanding and support. So often, they are met by blank faces, complicated forms and an inhuman bungling bureaucracy…

“At the other end of the scale, we find a group of people who are chronically bound up in the vicious cycle of homelessness, and its consequences. These people make up the smallest percentage of the single homeless population. These are the people who the media sensationalises as ‘the wino’, ‘bum’, ‘the dregs’ and so on.

“This is a group of human beings whose physical and mental health is in a state of abject ruin. Their lives revolve around a culture whose focus is cheap alcohol.

“Most suffer from chronic ill health, which is rarely given attention. Their life pattern oscillates from the street to the prison or casualty department and back to the street again. Most of society blatantly shuns this group of human beings. They are almost totally isolated and neglected, they are people who suffer terribly in their despair and loneliness and who crave for real love and human understanding…”

Trust contact: 11,000 consultations carried out last year

By Jennifer Hough, Irish Examiner
Monday, September 13, 2010

FIGURES from Trust for 2009 released to the Irish Examiner show it carried out almost 11,000 consultations last year, almost 7,000 of which were with Irish people and more than 3,500 with foreigners.

The service is person-orientated, and the charity meets on average 100 to 120 people weekly (about 5,000 throughout the year) in daily journeys through the city.

According to Trust founder Alice Leahy, time spent with people can range from dressings, advice on medication, housing and entitlements, referral to specialist services, assistance with washing/showering, foot-care (extremely time consuming yet hugely beneficial to those using Trust’s services), contact with families, doctors, community welfare officers, solicitors, hospitals especially emergency departments and explanation of medication. Human contact is a vital component of the work.

“While this would not be seen as structured outreach – all interactions lead to listening, advising and ultimately assisting people,” Ms Leahy said.

“Contact is also maintained with people in hospital, prison or nursing homes through visits, letters or phone calls,” she said.

Almost 4,500 showers were taken at the charity’s centre last year, but according to Trust, that the city does not provide public showers remains a serious area of concern. In 2006, the charity submitted a detailed proposal to Dublin City Council and commissioned an architect to draw up plans for public showers.

“The ability to have a shower and maintain personal hygiene is a fundamental right and critical to maintaining good health. Trust is not a public washing facility but provides shower facilities and cannot cope with increasing demand,” Ms Leahy says.

“Other European cities have these public facilities and given the innovative nature of the plans that Trust has prepared it is clear this could even become a signature service in Dublin.

“We have met Dublin City Council, the minister for the environment and other interests involved, and are continuing to work to seek to have these facilities provided. This is a need that is not being addressed,” she says.

THANK you for highlighting the plight of people with mental health problems through Jennifer Hough’s excellent piece (June 7). However, I find myself once again saying “the more things change the more they remain the same”.

In your editorial you rightly point to the fact that facilities are unfit for human habitation, much less recuperation, while acknowledging the determination of minister John Moloney. Ministers come and go, and so too personnel working in the field. Many leave for promotion and others as a result of sheer frustration while those needing improved facilities remain statistics in an ever increasing pile of reports.

Reports do not include figures for people who over the years were discharged to hostel accommodation because they were cheaper to run, or to struggling communities without adequate support. Many people end up on the streets because they have serious psychological and psychiatric problems without ever having received the support required to live in the community.

Many people are scarred by a lifetime in state institutions and all are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.

More than a quarter of a century ago the then Health Minister Barry Desmond published a grand strategy, Planning for the Future. Many patients in psychiatric hospitals were literally made homeless because no adequate community care services were provided as envisaged in the plan – without support many ended up on the streets. We can testify to that because we still meet many of them as they are counted among people who are still homeless today.

At a time when state services for the most vulnerable people in society are being outsourced to the voluntary/private sector, serious questions need to be asked. It is not surprising that many are sceptical of programme plans.

Minister Moloney urgently needs the support of all government departments. This will cost money. Support services need to be put in place – it is not just about doctors and nurses where it would appear there is a welcome relaxation of the recruitment embargo. The rush to fill vacant apartments must not now result in another dumping ground – this will happen if adequate support services area not put in place.

Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that everyone is entitled to dignity and respect – something we should not forget in these challenging times for all.

Alice Leahy
Director and Co-founder
TRUST
Bride Road
Dublin 8

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, June 24, 2010

Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2010/0624/opinion/nothing-has-changed-for-mental-health-sufferers-123205.html#ixzz0rrPAkdy6

By Jennifer Hough

A SOCIAL campaigner who yesterday received a lifetime achievement award for her work with homeless people has vowed to carry on for another lifetime.

Alice Leahy, the co-founder of charity TRUST, a social and health service set up in 1975, said it was a “great boost” to receive the National Health Literacy Award, which recognises healthcare professionals efforts to address health literacy problems.

She said it was not about her but about recognising the people she and her team meet everyday.

Winning opened doors for them and allowed their work to continue, she said.

Ms Leahy, who has received awards over the years for her work with society’s most disadvantaged people, said realising you had a lifetime of work done, it was also important to wake up the next morning and start all over again.

She said communicating with people in a simple way was paramount to helping them.

A big problem for people using services, she said, is the jargon they face.

“One phrase used now in relation to poverty is ‘case management’ but this is such a cold and meaningless term,” said Ms Leahy.

“To me language in use now is distancing people. We need to use simple language, and be crystal clear,” she said.

Ms Leahy, who last year published a book titled Wasting Time With People, said if we do not give our time, what is the point.

Dr Gerardine Doyle, UCD Business Schools and chairperson of the Crystal Clear Awards judging panel said Ms Leahy was chosen as her work embodies the ethos of health literacy.

“Alice’s work empowers those who are sleeping on the streets of Dublin, who have varying literacy levels, to access the services they need,” she said.

“The judges felt her willingness to communicate in non-conventional ways through personal contact, paintings, poems, uplifting magazines and books is inspirational, and we honour her for her ongoing dedication to a person-centred model of care.”

by Jennifer Hough

MORE than 700 people queued outside a Dublin friary yesterday for free food parcels — double the numbers the centre normally feeds.

From early morning, crowds began to gather, afraid they might miss out on the basic food packs, which contain staples such as bread, tea, sugar, and tinned food.

Brother Kevin Crowley, who runs the day centre of the Capuchin Friary on Church Street, Dublin 7, said he was deeply saddened that so many people were presenting for free food and that yesterday was the first time they had ever run out of supplies.

He said it is not just homeless people, but people who have lost their jobs and are finding it difficult to make ends meet.

He said the crowds were made up of different age groups and nationalities, but there were now a lot more young people and families living in difficult circumstances.

“I was talking to one young man who felt terrible that he had to come here for food, but he said he was hungry and had no choice.” He said the numbers coming to the centre for meals had also greatly increased.

“We might normally have 250 people for dinner, yesterday we had 430,” he said. All food at the centre is free.

Br Crowley said running costs are e1 million annually, e450,000 of which was a Government grant.

“We raise the rest ourselves and rely on the generosity of people.”

Br Crowley also noted the number of foreign nationals in need of aid. “They have no family supports to rely on,” he said.

Alice Leahy, founder of Trust, a charity for homeless people, said it was a “very fearful time” and that there had been a dramatic increase in the number of foreign people using the charity’s services.

She said more than 50% of the people it sees are not Irish. She urged foreign embassies to play a role, and contribute something to help people from their countries. She said a Lithuanian man was recently buried in Trust’s plot in Glasnevin cemetery and the only people at the funeral were the social worker, the charity workers and the priest. “You would have thought he could have been repatriated,” she said. “That is something which would have happened 30 years ago.”

Another worry, Ms Leahy said, was for people who were becoming suddenly homeless.

“Those who have lived on streets for many years somehow learn to cope, but if someone loses their job and finds themselves homeless it is a shock and very difficult for them to cope. There will be a big psychological effect that is not addressed.”