Empathy enables trust to grow. Seeing peoples experience of homelessness through a perspective of trauma, Zena and Angela talk about working without judgment.

They recognise how overwhelming it is for people living homeless to suddenly have the things we take for granted such as food, a room, running water, warmth or something as basic as an ensuite.

Alcohol dependency prevents many residents getting into other places creating a cycle of isolation and a world where you can’t enter anywhere.

Highwater House allows alcohol use and in doing so provides sanctuary and the safety to sleep without fear.

Transcript

 So when you’re talking about safe, tell me a bit more about safe. Safe from what. Yeah. And what then what makes it safe?

I think it’s safe from everything in their life and even themselves. The trauma that they have experienced is really linked to perhaps negative relationships.

Now, a negative relationship can cause a lot of damage to someone. So we think that a positive relationship will put it right, to feel safe means that you can go to sleep at night because when you are on the street, you can’t close your eyes because the traumas that you experience come back and that’s why you may need the alcohol.

And the drugs to try and depress those feelings because they haven’t got medication. To be able to go to bed at night and sleep and know that there are team members there if you needed anything.  We find that they’re exhausted when they first come in because they have had no sleep.

So imagine if you needed to have a drink to get up in the morning to take away the terrors in your head, in your mind, then they can’t access anywhere because they’ve had a drink. Because a lot of places will say, no, you can’t come in because you’ve been drinking alcohol today. So then you end up with a, in a world where you can’t actually enter into anywhere and you can’t see anybody. So that’s why our door is always open.

So a lot of what you are talking about there is the ways in which you are creating trust and building relationships. Tell me a little bit more about what do you feel creates trust between people?

I think it’s just perhaps having that connection.

It’s about building.  A relationship. A friendship. 

Obviously we’re, we are here to provide a service, but you do have to have a certain amount of a relationship with people sometimes.

And you have to have empathy. You have to have empathy. Empathy. You have to understand it from their point of view. You know how they have experienced things in their life.

That perhaps make them not trust people. You have to see it through the lens of trauma. How do they see this? How do they see a professional coming in? Does that trigger them? It is a lot think about. It can take so much time.

And one of the most important things is just not being judgemental.

Do not tell people what to do. Don’t pretend you know what they want, because at that time they may not even know themselves. All they want possibly is a warm bed and a door. People are quite overwhelmed when you show them an ensuite room.

Are there any examples that you. You’d like to share about where that has happened?

We’ve brought people in and if you show them an en suite room, it’s very overwhelming for somebody who hasn’t even had a bed. They can’t get used to three meals a day when you are homeless, you’re going into a bin and you’re in your pocket, your food for the next week, and they actually find it quite overwhelming being brought into an environment and are provided with the things that we actually don’t even think about. Those basic things of heat, warmth a room, running water, and it can be very overwhelming for people.

And we have meals here. That helps build relationship and trust because we all sit together. Having a cup of tea with somebody is great if you haven’t been able to have a conversation with someone for a year. Just somebody not even having a conversation sitting next to you, drinking with you can be very therapeutic for somebody.

Say more about that.

If you think that you’ve had no engagement with somebody, nobody will let you in. You can’t go and have a cup of coffee because you’ve been banned from places. You’ve been abused, you’ve been kicked. We’ve had stories of people being urinated on when they’re homeless, and someone says, “do you wanna come in and sit and have a cup of coffee with me?” That can be very overwhelming for somebody, and it can bring on a lot of emotions, the tears, because they have not seen that compassion. And that’s quite sad, Isn’t it to say, if I’m honest in this day and age that they have not been shown any humanity or any compassion. And in fact, it’s heartbreaking, isn’t it?

Yeah. It really is quite heartbreaking.