First steps with a Terms of Reference

Paul Hocking and I met with Mike Friel and Paula Whittingham of the Council's Homelessness and Neighbourhood Renewal Team this afternoon - our opportunity to report on the meeting of Street Care volunteers which took place two weeks ago.

Since that meeting, I drafted, and presented to the meeting, an exploratory terms of reference for a Street Carers' Forum, that would entail a small group of experienced representatives of the volunteers meeting periodically with Council officers and others to organise 'capacity building' training events (as the jargon goes) to enable volunteers, especially new volunteers to develop confidence in their activities and acquire new experiences where needed - working safely, first aid, know how about support contacts and so on. Training that will help team leaders work better is also needed. We need as simple a framework as possible that will respect the very different starting points of statutory care service providors on the one hand and religiously motivated volunteer teams on the others. The challenge is to set out from a commonly accepted starting point in understanding what we're about with this Forum.

Mike and Paula seemed pleased with what we brought to the table - hopefully it meant that they understood the document and that it repsented a path to progress from their viewpoint. That's step one. Next week Paul and I will meet with the Street Carers' Representative Group (SCRG for short), to ask if members think it's fit for purpose. Then we have another meeting with a plenary assembly of volunteers, to seal the process of ownership. Then the plans for training session which we envisage will be able to fall into place.

The revised draft terms of reference (.pdf file) for which approval is sought can be found here

Street Carers conclave

This evening I attended the fourth in a series of meetings of people who arrange soup runs for Cardiff's street people. This was the first meeting to be held in the absence of Council officers, and felt to be important as part of the bonding process that's been going on as these meetings have progressed, between disparate people with common concerns for the poor. They also wanted to meet, aware that all known to be involved so far are practising Christians, motivated by their faith, so this was also an opportunity for faith sharing - something which might stretch the patience of public officials used to functioning under the veil of secular neutrality.

Mine was the privilege of opening the meeting, with no need to remind anyone of why we were there. I simply selected half a dozen brief but appropriate patches of scripture relating to Christian ministry and its core values, from the writings of Paul, James, the author of Hebrews and the Gospels. It was a task which gave me pleasure, and I'd like to think gave the participants pleasure also, from the appreciative grunts and Amens uttered around the room. Each of the differing street caring groups present spoke about what they did and how they went about it. There was a remarkable congruence, and also a remarkable sense of gratitude expressed by people for what they received from their encounters with poor people on the streets.

Many echoed the words of the redoubtable Elizabeth Perret-Atkins, founder of Cardiff's 'Rainbow of Hope' coalition, which organises the best part of a hundred volunteers into rotas spanning the month, when she said : "Essentially its not about feeding or clothing needy people, it's about the people themselves, making community with them in which they can experience Christ's love at work." That's a lot more passionate and compassionate a conviction than the administrative idea of 'service provision for homeless rough sleepers'. It takes a lot of extra commitment, of going the 'second mile' with those in need. And we heard lots of small stories modestly told, about what volunteers get up to, over and above feeding and clothing people.

Elizabeth been applying herself to street ministry for sixteen years, as have several others. One man present, Andy, has been ministering on the streets for thirty years. Two people present were unashamed to say that once they had been out there on the streets on the receiving end, and had been helped to move on by people of faith. It was a joyous occasion, which gave some remarkable insights into an evangelical spirituality grounded in practical service of others. I wish I could have recorded it all to play back to students for the ministry.

My involvement in this process has arisen out of my ministry on the other side of the equation - the concerns and problems experienced by city council workers and management in relation to the poor on the streets and those caring for them. It's been marvellous working with Paul Hocking, Pastor of Thorhill Community Church, and Chair of Cardiff Gweini, with oversight of activities in the Christian voluntary sector, himself a member of a soup run team. He steered the conversation with great sensitivity, ensuring all had a voice. This gave me chance to listen and appreciate all that was being said.

I was pleased that at the end of the evening, the meeting, with 36 attendees endorsed the idea of a Street Carers' forum - a small group of representatives of the wide range of those involved, charged with facilitating good relationships between the voluntary community and the City's officers. This is, to my mind, involves interpreting the Council's intentions to Street Carers, and interpreting Street Carers intentions to the Council, for there is a huge culture gap between the administrative discipline of 'service provision', working within budgetary parameters, making funding bids, allocating resources with the highest of aspirations, and the 'organic' approach of Christian pastoral and missionary outreach, attempting to centre upon the whole person and not just their presenting needs, working with a vision of what it means to be a whole person, saved by grace, rather than managing an 'individual care plan'.

Fundamentally all parties want the same thing : well-being for those in need. However, statutory service provision is guided by the head, voluntary pastoral care, by the heart. Both are needed. Each can achieve in areas that the other cannot. There's no sane alternative to partnership and dialogue.

Now that we have the beginnings of a representative instrument for Street Carers, I believe more constructive moves can follow. There's a long way to travel, and I'm hoping and praying that such a joyous beginning will be characteristic of the journey together.

New concepts inform the dialogue

Tonight thirty Street Care volunteers met with Mike Freil and Paul Whittingham of the City's Homelessness and Neighbourhood Renewal Team in County Hall, to continue the dialogue which was initiated at the meeting held at City Church back on 7th October.

Mike gave a useful, informative presentation of the professional social workers analysis of the situation of those who are vulnerable and needy in the City. Relatively few sleep rough, on a regular basis, perhaps as few as a dozen, but many more, would be categorised as 'insecurely housed' - occupying a hostel bed, sleeping on a friend's sofa, or in what's generally described as being in accommodation over which they have no control. This concept, new to many, shed valuable light on the people at the centre of concern for both volunteers and professionals.

The perception of some experienced volunteers was that there were greater numbers 'out there', some of whom were so fearful of contact with either the authorities or others in similarly precarious situations, that they managed to avoid official homeless audits. This perception was viewed as a matter for concern and future investigation.

The discussion mapped out some of the key areas of interest where volunteers thought there could be a need for training and support. Mike issued a contact information sheet with all the necessary details of every public service available to people 'insecurely housed' or sleeping rough around the clock. This was a resource requested by volunteers at the previous meeting, and was greatly welcomed by all present.

It was agreed that the next meeting to take place should involved just volunteers, affording them to speak frankly and openly about their practices and their motivations, and the concerns arising for them from the fact that the Christian roots of most involved in Street Caring, although not an issue for those in need, and on the receiving end can be called into question by some in authority. The realm of partnership between faith groups and statutory bodies can be fraught with difficulties which arise from the meeting of different cultures and approaches to addressing the problems of need. Volunteers need an opportunity to affirm their confidence in the value of the contribution they are able to make, as well as acknowledging scope for improvement.

Constructive encounters

A meeting at City United Reformed Church this evening, bringing together thirty volunteers from several networks of people involved in soup runs and street caring activities, together with five Council officials concerned with homelesness and housing. They were following through the initiative made by Mike Friel six weeks ago, when there had been a meeting of half a dozen volunteers, four staff and me.

On this occasion, I had the task of welcoming everyone explaining the purpose of the event - to consider how together we could raise the standard of care to people on the streets. The rest was then facilitated superbly by Paul Hocking, Pastor of Thornhill Community Church.

A meeting that began with a slight air of uncertainty unfolded with great warmth, enthusiasm and a good degree of frankness about some problem areas. We finished in decent time and set another date to meet and hopefully start developing a programme of empowerment. Many people lingered and chatted in a relaxed way for ages afterwards.

I felt pleased and grateful to be able to play a small part in making something like this happen. This kind of dialogue been needed for years.

Care in the city

At the area Deanery clergy Chapter meeting, I received some news about coming city centre activities from a couple of colleagues present. Several years ago a group of evangelical activists mooted the idea of having teams of Street Pastors out and about, ministering to consumers in the night time economy. It wasn't exactly clear at the time whether this was simply directed at ministering to the needs of the soul, or the body - as soup runs do. Now after a long period of quiet, it seems that a training programme is to start running next month, and it seems as if this will focus principally on pastoral listening, rather than material problem solving.

Sister Wendy's work over the past five years has shown how much need there is for listening people to be there in clubland for people with many life problems un-addressed in the normal run of daily existence. I wonder if it will be possible to interest its leadership in contributing to the soup run personnel discussion about empowering volunteers on the practicalities of caring? We would benefit from as much input as possible to create a suitable Street Carers' scheme. One of these days we might even find an effective way to enable those who are stuck at the bottom of the social heap to move on.

An unexpected, needed breakthrough

An invitation to a meeting this afternoon convened by Mike Friel, the head of the Council's new Housing and Neighbourhood Renewal team, tucked away anonymously in a corner of a business park down the Bay, in what I think used to be NTL's call centre building. It came via Jeff Rees, the outreach worker of the city centre homelessness team.

The idea was to get people together who are involved in the soup runs that operate in the city centre, and try to engage in a dialogue that stalled eighteen months ago when all the changes in the city centre social services set-up were first mooted. We'd got to the stage of outlining a proposal for a 'Street Carers' Accreditation Scheme' to offer basic training and skills development for those who might feel encouraged and supported by this. And naturally I was interested to see if this might be possible to re-start.

Members of the Paradise Soup Run were present, and Paul Hocking the wise and influential chair of the Evangelical Alliance's Cardiff Gweini. Paradise networks forty odd church groups across the city for soup runs. There are other groups besides, from student voluntary services, and churches not involved with the network, and individuals as well. Trying to get them all together, even to make or discuss anything to do with organisation is a bit like herding cats. But, as we sat around table I was gratified to think there'd been this much response to the Council's overture. We weren't going for long before I felt compelled to bring up the past. The idea of an Accreditation scheme, as far as it had got, was received with interest, and to my delight all those representing volunteer teams around the table welcomed the idea.

As a result, we agreed to meet again in a month's time, to make an effort to invite as many representatives of church soup runs as we can find out about, to a gathering at City URC in the evning of 7th October. I managed to contact Joel, the City Church administrator and secure a booking while the meeting was concluding, so everyone went away with the date in their diaries. I have been charged with making a presentation about the idea of Accreditation and its content, to lead to a brainstorming session on the desirability of particular kinds of content, the amount of it, and the level at which various kinds of volunteers might be expected to engage. Volunteers are invariably a mixed group in terms of ability, confidence and experience. There needs to be someting for different kinds of learning needs, so that everyone grows and feels affirmed by their involvement in the scheme.

I'm just so delighted that something I thought we'd lost has come within sight again, with more than just a few enthused ideas people driving it. In all this, the success of the occasion was down to Ian, my city centre 'eyes and ears' having met and networked with key people in the world of soup runs and social services outreach. He had the important phone numbers to enable himself and me to invite these few important others to be involved. It's a great service towards making things happen that need to happen.

At the very edge of the city centre

The poor at the gate
Over the past year, if not longer, I've found myself listening to different people expressing concerns about the relatively small number of people, a couple of dozen or so, who live wild in the city centre. It's a bit of an embarrassment to the city's image stylists, but in a way, I'm susprised at how readily it's overlooked. There's a mix of men and women, many of them youngish, hanging around Central Station and the multi-storey car parks, either on drugs or very heavy drinkers, equally dependent on emergency handouts from social services and free food dished out by either volunteers doing soup runs, or the Barclays Bank sponsored / Social Services / Volunteer partnership which runs the excellent Night Bus - a dark blue double decker dispensing food, health care and information on emergency shelter for anyone who needs it. In fact, Cardiff City Centre Social Services has a good record of getting people off the streets and into accommodation within 48 hours, a 98% success rate. This is good news for the vulnerable - runaways, people in crisis, or new arrivals in the city finding their promised job or the offer of a floor to sleep on has fallen through.

The chronic core
That leaves the hardened survivors - people who've been sleeping rough for years, surviving with mental health problems and/or addiction. They can find it difficult if not impossible to adjust to accommodation in hostel for long enough to break the cycle. Sleeping outside means they don't get bothered as much, when all they seem to want to live for is to get stoned, immunise themselves against harassment and hide from everyday life. One of the consequences of this is the poisonous litter of used needles, and excrement, both human and animals, in obscure doorways, and planter pots in quieter corners of town. So far, no incident hazardous to health has been reported as a result, but given the current risk-averse obsession with health and safety, it's an extraordinary oversight on the part of politicians and senior city bosses, and much to the credit of those who work on the streets to make the city enjoyably habitable, that they are concerned. Some of the most vulnerable sufferers take refuge on the streets rather than stay in a hostel, afraid because of their experience therein of aggressive behaviour, noise, crime - be it mugging or drugs trading which occasionally succeeds in overcoming all attempts by hostel workers to suppress it.

The vicious cycle
For social service street outreach workers, constant vigilance is necessary to identify and help them, Also they need to be vigilant against the temptation to write off the really needy who seem to be beyond help apart from the money they need for their next fix or bottle of Thunderbird liquor. Most of the beggars who appear near cash machines, or in strategically visible places on the street (like the alley outside St John's Church) aren't begging for food and shelter. They want money to feed a drug habit. Probably the majority of those who are generous to them are unaware that they are able to find free meals twice a day, that they are contributing to the vicious cycle that enslaves them. The police arrest them under vagrancy bye-laws. They get a night in a cell off the streets, a court appearance that seldom leads to suitable remedial action, then as soon as possible they are begging somewhere again. It's not an overwhelmingly huge problem on the scale of possible human problems to solve, but for those with eyes to see, it's a nagging concern that here's a group of people it seems impossible to rehabilitate. Now and again, one of them disappears, or is found dead. There's no outcry, little by way of public embarrassment, but among those who care, there's a sense of frustration and failure at the waste of lives through booze or heroin. How to break the vicious cycle?

Diverted giving
Steve, a member of the city centre management team had the idea of establishing secure collection boxes at strategic points, and running a publicity campaign to draw attention to the fact that giving to beggars here changes nothing for the better. The collecting boxes are intended to raise funds for voluntary rehabilitation work. Suitably secure boxes, to be set in a ground mounted pillar were acquired. Permission has been granted, so far, only to install them in NCP car parks near the pay machines, a favourite site for beggars. Heaven knows what the banks would think of having boxes near cashpoints, as they seem reluctant to do anything about the sad characters who regularly squat near them at night importuning, sometimes even intimidating customers. Steve's hard hitting publicity poster awareness campaign promoting 'diverted giving' has been watered down with help from anxious local authority lawyers. All is now set to run, with a bit of extra enforcement help from the police.

Consequences
Will this shake up the routine of the hardened addicted rough sleepers? Will the extra hassle nudge them in the direction of compromising their anti social demands and accepting the professional help that's there waiting for them? We wait and see - in my case, watch and pray. The start of recent police crackdowns on vagrants in the centre co-incided with a series of purse thefts from volunteers looking after the 'Cards for Good Causes' shop and the South Wales Arts Exhibition in church. These incidents may be unrelated, but it has church workers all a bit edgy at the moment.

Unconsidered impact
The other worrying factor in attempts to address the homelessness problem has been the impact of the volunteer soup run on the area in which it is located. A couple of times it has moved in the past year. Crowds of meal seekers gather, drug dealers seek them out. Sometimes there are fights. Sometimes shoppers passing by are intimidated. There's always discarded remains of food and containers strewn about the street adding to the burden of night cleaners and neighbouring shop workers. Children who are not homeless or runaway gather to be fed, sent by parents unwilling or unable to make them a meal at home. These can be vulnerable in the presence of unstable people, and vulnerable to predators who target children for their own reasons. Some experienced volunteers are aware and concerned about the problems caused. There's no doubt about the keenness and sincerity of all the volunteers, but for the most part they little or no training, and are unable to handle problems which arise. The danger is they become part of the overall problem. In some British cities, and also in the US, street based feeding stations have been banned because of the public nuisance factor.

A middle way?
Informal discussions about these concerns in Cardiff, between city centre social workers, city centre management, retailers, politicians, police and clergy colleagues which I've been privileged to share conclude that the volunteer contribution (over a hundred people, mostly from suburban churches) should not be banished or punished, but supported and encouraged to work with the professionals and the authorities, offered suitable training to make them more effective as 'street carers' - nice new piece of civic jargon. Everyone argues about the hows and wherefores, and the pastoral methods to be applied, but the bottom line is that everyone's desires and aims for rehabilitation. Without it the problem persists. Many religious believers may hope for conversions, morally reformed characters etc., but it's healing at every level that's most needed, setting sufferers free to live full lives, no longer defined merely as a victim or a micro contributor to international organised crime and the Afghan economy.

Progress in setting up a scheme to empower street carers is a painstaking task, requiring political and diplomatic persuasiveness to keep everyone on-side. It's a complex, many layered project that needs trust and good-will all round. Better that it happens in a low key way, than being driven by the media which can quickly raise a storm of attention, and equally quickly pass on to the next minor sensation, having provoked over-reaction in every direction. It doesn't matter if any of this effort ever makes a decent headline. What matters is people working together to bring such suffering to an end.