Was this
the ultimate career
switch?
|
BELMONT
RURAL PEOPLE Was this the ultimate career switch? |
| HOME | The bike | Rev Clive | The plane | Dave H |
| The gardener | The racer | Ron Loft | Taxidermy |
| Fifteen
years ago Belmont's Dave Hider’s career took a remarkable change of
direction. While taking a course in theology at a Birmingham college he
met Sarah, the woman he later married. As part of her course Sarah was working
at a hostel for the homeless and Dave spent time there, exploring a very
different world. A world which subsequently became his world. At the time
he was an M&S store detective mainly concerned with arresting larcenous
staff.
Since then he’s worked with the YMCA and, more particularly, organisations which alleviate the problems of homeless young people. Five years ago he came to Hereford and is manager of SHYPP (Supported Housing for Young People Project). A long acronym often cloaks a feeble organisation. However given Herefordshire’s chronic lack of resources and a mere five-year existence, SHYPP appears to punch well above its weight. A team of twenty is augmented by fourteen volunteers and the work is broken down into four areas: housing, lone parents, outreach and Nightstop.
Housing consists of three supported houses, in Hereford, Leominster and Ross, but the service doesn’t end with accommodation. Young people (Customers? Clients? There isn’t a satisfactory generic word for those using SHYPP) are helped regain their self-esteem, instructed in practical matters such as first aid and IT skills, shown how to compile a CV and anything else that can free them from the vicious circle of unemployment. Helping lone parents is self-explanatory even though the task becomes ever more complex when infants become part of the equation. Outeach attempts to contact those who have not approached the service and to nip the problem in the bud. SHYPP staff, accompanied by young people who have been helped, visit schools and try to discourage those who may contemplate leaving home. “We’ll do everything we can to prevent them having to leave home if they don’t need to,” Dave says. Nightstop is an interesting variant on this theme. Here short-term accommodation is provided by ordinary adults in the community (“host families”) who have a spare bed in their home. Dave makes a telling comment. “They can claim expenses of up to £10 a night, but most don’t.”
In any one 24-hour period about 120 young people in Herefordshire – between the age of 16 and 25, who would otherwise lack shelter - are being accommodated. It’s a commendable and effective service but its adminstration has to be hard-nosed at times. SHYPP can only consider drug addicts who have taken steps towards curing themselves. And where a young person is continually disruptive, spoiling the lives of those he or she is living with, Dave will reluctantly sign an eviction notice. Albeit, only after exhaustive assistance and warnings have failed, and with the promise that help will be available if the behavioural problems are suppressed. Dave reckons that out of 1200 or so that apply each year, only three or four attract this ultimate sanction. There can be other problems. Rigid mindsets about young people together with inevitable NIMBYism from those living close to the supported housing have to be dealt with. One might have expected that SHYPP needed to preach its availability but some 60% of applications are self-referrals. “We’re well known among young people of that age group,” says Dave. If he were suddenly the beneficiary of a £100,000 donation? Pretty unlikely, but Dave thinks it would go into “bricks and mortar” (ie, supported housing). “There’s a desperate shortage,” he says, “and so little land to build on.” He adds that a chunk of the money would go to set up preventive services. Dave admits that what he and the SHYPP staff do is a vocation not a job. And it may be that he himself hasn’t quite satisfied that call. In December he will be paying a fifth working visit to India for a month. Yes, Herefordshire has its own problem but in Bangalore he’ll be among “the poorest of the poor”. A worthwhile step down, if you like. |