Last year we had our first ever charity ball. It was a huge success and so, we did it again! On March 18th at Leeds City Hilton the Simon on the Streets Rough Diamond Ball went off with a bang! Our guests entered into a raffle to win a diamond, worth £1000, generously donated to us by Neil Geddes, a fine jewellery concierge who has supported the event for the last two years. The winning ticket for the diamond was concealed in a balloon, the winner revealed with a loud pop!
This event was incredibly important to us at Simon on the Streets. It gives us an opportunity to share the stories of our clients with people who may not otherwise hear them. Corporate fundraising is also an essential funding stream for us as an independent charity. As well as attendance from some very loyal supporters, we were also joined by many companies we hadn't met before. On the night we raised around £6000.00 which is fantastic and will fund intensive 1-2-1 support for a whole year for at least 3 individuals. What is even more important are the relationships that we have formed through the event and that we hope will continue to grow for the long term.
Below is the copy of the speech that our Development Manager, Aissa Gallie read to the attendees. It was a powerful moment in the event, during her reading you could have heard a pin drop. We are hugely grateful to all present for giving such close attention during the most important part of the evening. Caitlin Stubbs, our Sounds on the Streets winner from 2015, followed after the speech with a beautiful, acoustic rendition of Nik Kershaw's song, 'Wouldn't It Be Good'. The night was closed with incredible, upbeat live music from The Mirrors band, dancing went on until the early hours.
We hope to run this event again next year. With sponsorship, we hope that we can reach a target of around £20,000 to fund a support worker in Leeds for a full year.
ROUGH DIAMOND BALL SPEECH - WRITTEN BY AISSA GALLIE
Last week, Keith Humphrey (Busker the Musical) very kindly volunteered to go out on outreach with one of our workers. After returning home from a day’s work, he made sure he was warmly dressed and headed out again to meet with our support workers at 8.15pm. As he was leaving his wife asked, ‘What time will you be home love?’ After his night out on the streets, chatting with a number of our clients, Keith was drawn to reflect on that simple question. When we spoke about his experience we unpicked its meaning and found so much in it that helps us to reflect on what homelessness really means. This question, ‘what time will you be home love?’ tells Keith that he is loved. When asked when he’ll be home, the real question is, ‘when will you be safe?’, ‘when will I see you again?’ Keith runs his own business, but in his own time he writes musicals and volunteers. His home -life is rich, with loved ones, with work, with friends, with things that interest him. After his night on outreach, what became so obvious to Keith, that ending homelessness isn’t about HOUSES, it’s more than that, it’s about HOMES – and the multiple and complex things that make up a ‘home’.
As a charity we say that we work with people with multiple complex needs, including rough sleeping or the risk of rough sleeping. Under the umbrella of complex needs are issues around addiction, mental health, alcoholism, unresolved childhood trauma. Significantly, our clients are targeted for support because they are not engaging with any other service or receiving meaningful support elsewhere. Our clients are our clients because they are the most marginalised and disengaged and experience huge barriers to accessing services that are available. What’s out there to support them isn’t working for them, they need something different and that’s where we come in. All of our work is outreach based, at street level, and we work to give our clients emotional support as a high value offering. What that means in real terms is that we aim to get to know them, to build their trust and to develop a relationship for the long term. As an independent charity we have all the time in the world and so we work at our clients pace. As and when the time is right the relationship evolves to have a practical element, we can help our clients to access services, to help them navigate through the incredibly complicated and bureaucracy laden world of funded services. We can support them through the difficulties and injustices they will inevitably face, we can be there for them time and time again when it gets too tough and they take steps backwards instead of forwards. We can be that significant other person who is always there and never judges.
So who are our clients? And how do we help them? I think it helps if I share the story of one of our clients with you. Throughout March, as a charity we have chosen to put the spotlight on the women that we work with, to highlight some of the very specific issues that some homeless women face. So tonight I’d like to talk to you about Cass.
Cass first engaged with us about five years ago as a rough sleeper. She is currently housed, but remains at risk of falling back into homelessness and rough sleeping due to her chaotic lifestyle. Cass is a bit of an enigma. She won’t engage with any services other than Simon on the Streets, and even with us she can sometimes drop back on her engagement for long periods of time. However, we never stop seeking to re-engage with her and our consistency is paying off. Currently she is working well with one of our Support Workers and there is a good deal of trust building between them. Cass is around 27 years old and yet she looks and acts more like a child of 12. It seems that Cass has never grown up, she lacks the skills to do so. Understanding her background gives context to that.
As a baby, from around 5 months old Cass was subject to ritual sexual abuse by groups of men who were invited to do so by her mother. This wretched abuse remained under the radar of social services until she was around 9 years old, when she was removed and placed in foster care. Here she experienced abuse again at the hands of her foster father. She was removed from that care around age 12 and spent the remainder of her adolescence and early teens being moved from place to place, never experiencing consistency of care or love.
Around 15 years old she met Brian, another child in care who had also experienced horrendous abuse as a child. They formed a relationship which stands to this day. However, they are both so desensitised by the lives they have lived that abuse is normalised. Brian manipulates Cass. He forces her to sleep on the floor, he makes her go for long periods without food, he beats her, at Christmas he stabbed her in the face. When her worker asked her how she felt about this incident, Cass simply brushed it off commenting, ‘that’s just men isn’t it?’
So how do we support Cass?
We know what we know about her due to her relationship with our Support Worker. We are a constant in her life, somewhere she can run to and know she will be safe. Someone she can talk with and share her experiences safely. We are there to bear witness to her life, to say ‘what’s happened to you must be so hard to live with’ and on the subject of domestic abuse, ‘no, it’s not just men and it’s not ok. You deserve better’.
Cass injects amphetamines and smokes copious amounts of strong cannabis. We advise her on safe practices and help her to engage with needle exchanges. She’s not ready for a drug worker, but when she is we’ll be there. We have supported Cass off the streets into housing. We will continue to support her if she loses her tenancy. We can advocate for her with housing services and attend court hearings with her. We can help her with her benefits. We visit her is hospital when poor health or beatings take her there.
Cass and Brian have had three children, all of whom are now in care or have been adopted. The cycle continues. When Cass lost her last child her worker from Simon on the Streets supported her through the lengthy court process and helped her to maintain some supervised visitation with her baby, who was removed at birth. For a while this went well, but Cass was unable to meet the expectations for her to lower her drug use. The visitations stopped, the child was put up for adoption. Cass will never see her child again. But we don’t judge. We just stay by her side and continue our support.
Currently we have concerns that Cass may be pregnant again. Either that or she is showing signs of extreme malnutrition. Our Support Workers know the safeguarding implications of either and are working hard with Cass for her to engage with services that she so desperately needs in either case.
Will Cass’s life ever change for the better? We don’t know. In some ways it has. She no longer sleeps on the streets and for the first time in her life she has a relationship on which she can depend completely. She remains wary, but trust is building. But obviously there is still so much in her life that makes her incredibly vulnerable. We have a vast history of clients with similar stories to Cass that have gone on to live sustainably positive lives; rooted in the self-esteem, social skills and motivation gained from their interactions with Simon on the Streets. It can take time for those changes to occur, but once they do they are solid. Success looks very different for different people. With Cass we are succeeding in that she is engaging with us. With other success has led to housing, employment, family, love, home. If that’s the future for Cass then that’s fantastic. But no matter what we all want for her, only she will determine her future. What we can guarantee is that we will be there to support her as long as she remains at risk of homelessness and with multiple complex needs.
Simon on the Streets has been operating in Leeds for over 16 years and for around 5 years in Bradford and Huddersfield. Our independence is crucial and yet as with any small and independent charity, finding the money to go on has been incredibly tough. Fortunately we’ve had some hugely dedicated and passionate people working for our organisation over the years, some of whom have been key to many of the relationships we hold that continue to support us. We’re just about making ends meet, but unfortunately as you all will have seen, the problems of rough sleepers and street homelessness is growing. More and more people live their lives on the margins of society and we simply do not have the resources we need to help them all. Quite simply we need to grow. We need more feet on the street, more hours spent listening, we need more workers. It costs us around £20,000 a year to employ a Support Worker. We hope that with events like this we can reach for that target for as many workers as we need. Your being here tonight is crucial to that. But what is even more crucial is that we build relationships to last. That we’re in it for the long haul, so that we can give all the time that these incredibly vulnerable individuals need to make the changes they need to make at a pace that works for them, and most importantly at a pace that is motivated by them and can be sustained by them.
So tonight I ask from you something much more important than money. I ask you to take to heart Simon on the Streets. Take to heart the support we give to people like Cass. Take to heart the difference that it makes. Take it to heart and help us to get people home.
Thank you.