There have always been a few regular faces begging and sleeping rough around our head office in south London.  Our teams and other homelessness charities work year round to try and get people off the streets and into safe and secure accommodation.  I have been heartened to see fewer of them recently – thankful that they will not need to endure the impending cold weather, assuming they were all resettled (albeit perhaps temporarily).  However, one of my staff shattered this rose-tinted illusion – “No Rob, they aren’t in hostels.  Most of them have gone back inside so they’ve got somewhere to live this winter.”  

Many of our clients have a history of rough sleeping and are released with nothing – a discharge grant of £40 to tide them over the next few weeks, the clothes on their backs, a drift into a crack house and then a swift return to prison.  It says a lot about the quality of their life outside if a 9ft cell is seen as improvement.

For them our caseworkers are a real lifeline because – quite frankly – there is no-one else there for them.  We will ensure that everyone we work with has somewhere to stay that night – paying out of our own resources if need be – and work like crazy against heavy odds to make sure that accommodation is found for every prison leaver we help if they need it.   Most of them do.


On average, we help over 1,000 prison leavers each year, handholding people on the rocky road to resettlement.  We help each client overcome many bureaucratic barriers to get the services they need.  This is difficult work – especially for those prisoners released on Fridays when all the support services are shutting up for the weekend! However, our caseworkers are very canny negotiators of the system and it is partly down to this that they are able to provide such an effective service.



However, life for both caseworkers and our clients is becoming ever more tough.  Competition for private rented housing – which we rely on to house most of our clients – is very fierce and prison leavers are not usually top priority for landlords.


 
We are not in the business of letting our clients down and will continue to punch well above our weight on our very limited resources to help people everyone who needs it.  Once again, funding is uncertain for our service which supports prison leavers returning to London. This is a real source of frustration for me as it is a jewel, delivering such benefits for local communities in terms of reduced crime and far fewer victims.


 
Our first ever Christmas Appeal tells the story of Patricia – a lady we helped who was facing the prospect of homelessness after a long sentence. For us the most fundamental side to her story was that over the space of a less than ten years she had gone from conventional, home-owning, employed mum to prison leaver with no home, no future, no job, no ID and no support.  



She committed just one crime for a quick buck to pay back her arrears.  At a time when many are struggling with debts, rising rents and desperation her story was a sobering one.  Given the opportunity, how many of us would take such a risk to try and keep our homes and have all our seemingly insurmountable problems solved? Patricia did and she lost everything because of it. With our help, she is slowly getting her life back. Doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?



There are many more Patricias and guys like the ones I described at the start of this column.  They desperately need our help.  However, we need your help to do this.  Please dig deep and support us this Christmas.  Help us keep people off the streets and out of prison.  95p in every £1 goes directly back to our helping people through our frontline services.   By working together, we can make all make a difference.



Have a very Happy Christmas and a safe and rewarding 2012.  Not only will this year see the capital hosting the Olympic Games - and we hope our athletes will shine gold – but it is also our 50th anniversary. More on that next year!

Rob Owen
Chief Executive, St Giles Trust