Homelessness: Treating people with dignity and respect is key to helping rough sleepers – Ewan Aitken

Returning to work after the holiday, I began again my commute from the kitchen up the stairs to the small room my wife and I now share as a “working from home office” and I had, I have to confess, an overwhelming sense of weariness.
Treating rough sleepers in a way that makes them feel they matter makes it feel easier for them to 'take the risk’ of engaging with support services (Picture: Steve Riding)Treating rough sleepers in a way that makes them feel they matter makes it feel easier for them to 'take the risk’ of engaging with support services (Picture: Steve Riding)
Treating rough sleepers in a way that makes them feel they matter makes it feel easier for them to 'take the risk’ of engaging with support services (Picture: Steve Riding)

It didn’t last long. I know how lucky I am compared to many; at least I can work from home unlike so many others, including many of my own colleagues who directly support those in the tough reality of homelessness.

Across our society many of those who cannot work at home are also the lowest paid and with the least job security. If we are to “build back better”, we must change the harsh realities of those at the bottom end of the pay scales, increasingly being asked to do more with less.

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The issue here is not just cash, crucial as this is, but the sense of dignity and being valued which we all need to flourish. This devaluing of others was seen also in the scandal about food parcels with private companies making large amounts of money from public cash intended to provide food for low-income families.

But the immoral nature of this scandal is not just alleged profiteering. It’s the idea we can’t, as would be perfectly possible, simply give people the cash to buy the food they require. Doing this would not just make sure children got the food they needed but also that they and their families would have been treated with dignity, something as precious as good nutrition.

Dignity is also often the answer when we ask why the new hotel-based Welcome Hub, which has replaced the night shelter for people sleeping rough, is working so well – more people who use it are moving on more quickly.

Talking to people who use the service, they say having conversations in a comfortable room, knowing where their meal is coming from and staff from different agencies coming to them makes them feel they matter and makes it feel easier ‘taking the risk’ of engaging with support.

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The new Welcome Hub, which grew out of the experiences of using hotels for people rough sleeping in the first lockdown, has already seen folk who’d been using the night shelter for years move into new, and in some cases permanent, accommodation.

Some of my Cyrenians colleagues can’t work from home because they are part of the multi-agency team supporting the Welcome Hub which involves five charities, NHS Lothian, City Council and the company which owns the hotel.

Those colleagues will all tell you the journey out of homelessness is always built on the forming of trusted relationships. Trust is built by being treated with dignity, respect and compassion, values we all share and would hope ourselves to experience in our own times of need.

Homelessness is rarely just about the lack of a house, important as having a home is, and the solutions need much more than a roof and keys to a door to be sustainable. In the same way, giving someone inadequate food parcels does more than not feed them, it devalues them. In the coming year, and as we rebuild, let us make sure that our responses to the challenges ahead put dignity and respect at their core.

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