Skip to main content

Highway to hell: The grim journey to multiple exclusion homelessness - and the route back


There is a ‘fact’ doing the rounds on twitter which juxtaposes the information that Madonna has, allegedly, eight mansions in London with the number of homeless people in the capital, the implicit proposition being that homelessness could be ended if only the ostentatious wealth of the celebrated performer were redirected for the social purpose of housing the homeless.

I found the image of hundreds of homeless people living in communal nirvana in Madonna’s mansions entertainingly surreal. This injustice ‘fact’ has been re-tweeted with gusto, so presumably there really are people who think that solving homelessness is a matter of matching people with accommodation, whether it be a mansion or a bedsit and that’s it – job done.  

The truth is that homeless people, especially those living on the streets or close to it in hostels, squats and bed and breakfast hotels, have a complex mix of needs including poor mental health, substance misuse problems, poor literacy skills and limited, sometimes destructive, social networks. The impact and significance of these factors were comprehensively and convincingly demonstrated through an impressive piece of research into multiple exclusion homelessness which deserves much greater attention than it has so far received[1]. 

The research from Heriot Watt University investigates a group of 1,286 socially excluded people using ‘low threshold’ services such as day centres, direct access hostels and drop-in services and then analyses in greater depth the impact of social exclusion and homelessness on 452 individuals from this cohort. The quantitative richness of the research is considerable and its validity persuasive.

The research provides a number of illuminating, occasionally shocking, statistics including that 39% of the multiply excluded homeless had attempted suicide. It evidences childhood abuse and neglect as a major determinant of the more complex forms of multiple exclusion homelessness. Intriguingly, the researchers place in a timeline the various events that contribute to individuals becoming socially excluded, called a sequencing analysis. The life history of a typical chronically socially excluded person thus follows a grim trajectory. Most leave home, or local authority care, around the age of 17. Street drinking and dependency on alcohol and hard drugs commences early, from around 17 to 22, and early signs of deteriorating mental health exhibited through bouts of anxiety and depression also arrive in the early 20s. The experience of rough sleeping homelessness occurs relatively late along the lifeline, on average at the age of 26.  

Housing problems are not therefore the major factor triggering or shaping the journey destined to end in multiple exclusion homelessness.  However, the researchers note that settled housing is likely to be an important factor in providing a base from which the socially excluded can seek a pathway towards stability and independence.   

I suspect that this timeline sequence will be of little surprise to the experienced hostel worker, well aware that tackling homelessness is about a great deal more than resolving a housing problem. It is certainly of no surprise to my colleague Ben, a competent, dedicated outreach worker.  Ben talks eloquently about his life as part of his personal commitment to encouraging others to make changes in theirs. It is a story that in its bleakness is not easy to hear.  

His early life was blighted by his father’s violence.  Ben talks about him and his brothers cowering in fear when their father returned home, a home they shared with an alcoholic mother. Although his actual violence was infrequent, the threat was constant.  His older brother, learning from the father that aggression confers dominion over weaker people, systematically and brutally bullied Ben.

 At this early stage his life compass was set towards disaster. He left school without qualifications, devoid of self-esteem and unable to form constructive relationships.  Despite qualifying as a plasterer, his self-hatred left him exposed to manipulation and he was introduced to heroin and became heavily dependent. His worst moment he told me was sitting in a burned-out car, trying to find a vein that could take a needle and knowing that around him people were passing by, oblivious to him and his life. 

Somehow this deeply impressive man overcame these massive disadvantages. I asked how the miracle had occurred that enabled him to deal with his traumatic past and develop the determination, resilience and self-belief to shape a new life.  Ben has sought and embraced individual and group counselling and the insight that it has brought him has clearly been of great benefit. He talks candidly about the journey of recovery from heroin misuse and remains relentlessly watchful and self-questioning in order to avoid falling back into old ways.

He has been especially inspired by another former homeless person, a man who also suffered from appallingly limited life chances and was forced to confront a severe alcohol problem. It reminded me of the potent power of peer support; the strength derived from another who has faced the same challenges and become the influential role model who has successfully plotted a course away from addiction and self-destruction.

The multiple exclusion homelessness research rings true, yet the extreme grimness of the life histories it illuminates could give rise to abject despondency and a sense of hopelessness. I needed to hear Ben’s story of redemption and escape in all its rawness.  As the final question I asked him what he liked about himself.  He laughed ruefully; it sounded like pride mixed with remorse. ‘I like myself for having compassion for people despite everything that I have experienced and done’. It was a good and true answer spoken with confidence and it left me pensive and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, just a little choked up.          

A version of this blog was published in Inside Housing on April 19th 2012


[1] Multiple Exclusion Homelessness in the UK (Fitzpatrick, Bramley and Johnsen – 2011) 

https://webmail.hw.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.sbe.hw.ac.uk/research/ihurer/homelessness-social-exclusion/multiple-exclusion-homelessness.htm
Labels:

Comments

Unknown said…

You have shared a great information about Families Counselling and Harley Street Psychotherapy. Which are very informative for us.Thanks
19 June 2014 at 10:45
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Super-strength lager is a beer for sipping, possibly from a wine glass - and other delusions

Steve was telling me about the delusional behaviour of the drink dependent person – the alcoholic, as he refers to himself. Not, he was quick to point out, a recovered alcoholic. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. In his view, you can’t risk relaxing and then relapsing. You need to be on constant guard. At various times Steve had convinced himself that he could be a normal drinker. He would venture into his local pub and have a pint, then sit there all night trying not to think about a second pint. Having successfully reached last orders, he’d go home satisfied that his consumption of alcohol was under control.  But on the second night he would be the last to leave the pub having drank steadily all evening. By the end of the week, raging at the bar staff for refusing to serve him, his final ignominious departure was often assisted by the police. By now, out of control, he would buy six-packs of super-strength lager to drink at home. He preferred Tennent’s Super a...
8 comments
Read more

Killing with kindness

Much has been written about the psychology of giving, the reasons why we donate to charity and the different triggers that spark acts of generosity, some rational, others visceral. I am particularly fascinated by the impulses that lead us to give money to people begging on the street. In fact, to be candid, I am frequently left incredulous at the justification given for dropping money into that cap next to the sign that says ‘hungry and homeless’. Research indicates that for 90 per cent of people who give, compassion is the motivating factor. So I should not have been surprised that when speaking on BBC radio last week on the subject of begging, the first question was ‘isn’t it counter-intuitive that a homelessness charity is urging us not to give to beggars’? There he is, the homeless man cross-legged beside the cash point, beseeching, grimy, desperate. Do the right thing. A few years ago, one such man attracted the attention of Grant Shapps, then the shadow housing minister, ...
11 comments
Read more

Out of sight - sleeping rough in car parks and corridors

From the seventh floor of the multi-storey car-park at this late hour the view is rather magnificent, but a cruel wind is whipping up the rubbish and there is not a soul around. I’m a Thames Reach London Street Rescue team volunteer tonight searching for rough sleepers with my colleague Rob and we have received a self-referral from a man sleeping rough in the car-park. It’s been a frustrating night. In Hounslow we discovered plenty of cardboard bedding but not the group of Lithuanians we feared could be sleeping rough. Under Kew Bridge and in a park in Putney the lone rough sleepers we have been tasked with contacting were not in their usual places. I ruminate on the unsettling paradox of being grievously disappointed not to find someone sleeping rough in sub-zero temperature. But here on the stairwell we find our man, a 21-year old Pole called Karol. His is a story which is virtually a generic tale of youth homelessness. He came to this country as a fourteen year old u...
8 comments
Read more