Huddersfield’s hidden crisis

Sep 24 2008 by Val Javin, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

It’s often the place where people go who are facing a crisis in their lives ... sometimes it’s the only place left for them to go. VAL JAVIN reports on the work of the drop-in centre at the Methodist Mission in Lord Street

THE LOOK on my face must have said it all. There in front of me, clutching this newspaper’s property supplement was a student who had been told that in three days’ time she would be homeless.

Less than an hour before, she’d been advised to go to the council’s Housing Options and Support Service and ask for help.

Their view was that she was not a priority, did not fit their criteria. She was given the property supplement and advised to look in it for hostel accommodation.

Disbelief and a dozen questions struck not just me, but those around me – professionals from a number of agencies operating a drop-in centre at the Methodist Mission at Lord Street in the centre of Huddersfield.

It was one of these agencies who had advised the student, with no close family in the Huddersfield area and no-one able to act as the two guarantors needed to secure her student accommodation, to go to the council for help.

Having just completed her first year at university in Huddersfield, the female student in her twenties, faced not a return to her studies, but complete uncertainty.

Vulnerable, clearly bewildered and faced with little money and nowhere to go, she had turned to the place where she had always received a welcome and a friendly ear.

Spend a Wednesday afternoon at the Huddersfield Methodist Mission and it becomes apparent that there is perhaps something very wrong about our way of thinking when it comes to dealing with vulnerable people trying to cope with problems ranging from homelessness and debt to mental health issues and domestic violence.

Yes, there are many agencies working hard to combat the problems that an increasingly pressured society throws at people, but have we in general lost that personal touch, our ability to deal with people face to face, to empathise with their situation and to come up with practical, workable solutions?

Jacqui Goff, manager of the Mission Cafe and a volunteer at the drop-in centre that it hosts, has her own opinions.

She was the catalyst for the drop-in centre which has been running each Wednesday afternoon for 18 months.

She said: “I was spending a lot of my time talking to people who were in need or in crisis. Housing and benefits advice were the big areas.

“We see very vulnerable people here every day of the week. Some of them feel more comfortable in an informal setting like this rather than in an office.

“What’s missing in society is a face- to-face contact. I can talk on the phone for evermore, press buttons for evermore on behalf of one of our clients. But we’ve lost that personal touch.”

“On one occasion, we actually spent five hours on the office phone trying to get someone help. I sat there for three hours and then handed the phone to somebody else to keep pressing the buttons. In the end, the person we were trying to help walked out in tears of frustration.

“They come here to use the phone – some don’t have the money to use a public phone – because they are in absolute crisis and we can’t get through either. It really winds me up.”

What is positive is the work that the Mission Cafe does day after day not just during the hours of the drop-in sessions.

The cafe at Lord Street opens four days a week between 9am and 2.30pm. But those hours are often stretched. People in need don’t run to a timetable.

Jacqui works each day in the cafe and on Wednesday is often back at the mission as a volunteer at the drop-in centre.

“Today’s my day off! But I’ve come down here on Wednesdays for a year. I still come in when I can. I feel very passionate about the need to do something for these people. It’s just the fact that somebody needs to do it.

“I think that the system is failing these people. I have a very good working relationship with a lot of agencies and a lot of individuals within them are concerned, but it is the bureaucracy that is causing the problems.”

The mission has long had a cafe, but as well as providing reasonably priced, nutritious meals, its offers more. A listening ear, support and often much-needed advice.

“We get 70 customers a day on average. Some of it is passing trade. We get a whole cross-section of society. There are a lot of office workers using the cafe, families who come in with young children, but you might just as easily find an older person sharing a table with a person with alcohol dependency problems.

“We have an 87-year-old man who comes in every day for his lunch and for company. That’s why some of our customers come, because we have time to talk to people.

“People can sit all day if they want to. A cup is never taken away from them. Some people come and play chess, cards or dominoes. We have newspapers and books.”

“People come wanting something nice and nutritious and reasonably priced.”

But what often goes with that is advice and the credit crunch is clearly squeezing many people.

“I’m doing budget advice now as well,” said Jacqui, “and it is people who have managed perfectly well until now.

“It’s generally household bills, because most of the people I see don’t have cars and things so it is not directly fuel-linked, but that filters through in food prices.”

It was partly because of the volume of pleas for help and advice that the mission decided to start the drop-in centre.

Jacqui said: “It doesn’t stop me helping people during the week, but it’s good to be able to say to people, come on Wednesday and talk to people who might be able to help.

“The agencies who come were very pleased about being asked to get involved.”

What the cafe needs now is volunteers who can help with administrative jobs, who can help fund-raise and generally keep in good health a project which is working hard to support so many others.

If you want advice and support go to The Drop-in, Huddersfield Methodist Mission, Lord Street between 2-4 on a Wednesday.