Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless' | the Daily Mail

Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless' | the Daily Mail
Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless'
By JOHN BIRD - More by this author »

In a tough and provocative article, Big Issue founder John Bird argues that the present homeless policy is utterly useless and the only 'cure' for most is compulsory treatment in mental hospitals...

I know a fair bit about homelessness. It's a condition I've experienced first hand as both a child and an adult. My first period of homelessness came at the age of five when my family were down and out in what were then the slums of Notting Hill, London.

I've slept rough and in shelters and, having pulled myself out of that hole, 15 years ago I publicly bound myself to the problem of homelessness by founding The Big Issue magazine.

It isn't something I've ever had the luxury of taking lightly, or liberally.

It is something on which I have strong opinions. Last year Channel 4 asked if I would be interested in making a programme and they assured me that the take on homelessness would be mine and mine alone.

The resulting film will be shown on Friday, and I'm confidently predicting a lot of people taking exception to what I've got to say.

But you know what? I don't care. I'm past bothering with being polite and tiptoeing round the less-than-comfortable facts of a problem that affects hundreds of thousands of people in this country.

The way that the Government - and the plethora of charities creating what can only be described as the homeless industry - 'treats' this problem is just plain wrong.

The system isn't curing anything. At best it's masking the real nature and extent of the problem.

At worst it's drip-feeding the decline of individuals who are stuck in the homeless trap and kept there by the very system that's supposed to be helping them.

Imagine your doctor telling you that you are seriously ill. He books you into hospital for an operation. You go in, are shown to your bed and are asked what you want for supper.

The next day you sit by your bed, now familiar with the hospital and its regime. You wait patiently.

The next day is followed by another. Nothing happens. The days turn into weeks; and then months.

And one day a nurse says: "Tomorrow you are going home." "But I thought I was seriously ill," you say in surprise. "Oh, you are," she replies, "But our budget doesn't extend to curing you. This is all we can afford." Insane?

Yes. But this is what happens every day in the lives of the homeless. The majority of hostels can deal with whatever crisis has brought another person through their doors.

That crisis dissipates, the homeless person moves towards coping, they are placed in their own unsupported housing and, in a way, they return to society.

On paper this counts as a 'cure'. It is anything but.

Because the illness that caused the crisis in the first place is still there, untouched and untreated. Only now it is fed by the indulgence of the State and by the well-intentioned charity of homeless organisations.

What nobody wants to acknowledge is that 90 per cent of people in and around homelessness have drink and drug problems. And 90 per cent of that figure are people who cannot control it.

It is addictive behaviour and the only way to tackle it and stand any chance of 'curing' the homeless is to treat it as the mental problem it is. Addiction doesn't fall under the remit of the 1983 Mental Health Act. But it should.

The people who are homeless through addiction are feckless, unstable, unreliable, incapable of holding down a job, feeding themselves or cleaning themselves.

You take them into a hostel, patch them up and put them in State housing on benefits and they continue to kill themselves at the State's expense.

They are ill and should be 'sectioned' - lifted from the streets and confined in the care of the mental health system, behind bars if necessary.

It sounds drastic - and I expect a lot of outraged criticism - but it is the only realistic solution.

The hundreds of thousands of pounds wasted every year on maintaining hostels should be channelled into opening institutions like the Promis Centre in Kent which I visited when making the Channel 4 film.

It's a private clinic, like the Priory, that treats addictions of various types with a programme of complete submersion. It was started 20 years ago by two doctors whose son was an addict. They managed to 'cure' him.

I'm not saying you can cure everybody. But this sort of programme has a 60 to 70 per cent success rate. Treated in this way, a huge number of homeless could be 'cured' rather than maintained in the homeless trap.

The whole liberal, supportive system as it stands is just wrong. It's the road to hell paved with good intentions and the flood of well-meaning ignorance that sprang up 40 years ago with the screening of Cathy Come Home.

People saw that and thought, "Oh I've got a church we can open up, we can get the homeless all in there." Instantly, another problem was created. How are you going to get them to move on from there? I certainly know people who never could.

Jim was somebody I knew well. He died last year from alcohol abuse, having been slowly rotted by the system that, nominally at least, kept him out of homelessness for 25 years.

He teetered on the edge of society, there to be a pain to the hard-working people he lived among.

Periodically, he would wreck the flat he lived in, supplied by the council. Periodically, the police would reason with him. And periodically, he would calm down. All the time he was funded by the State.

The taxpayers paid for Jim to drink himself to death because nobody would accept the fact that his addiction was a state of mental illness.

Bill is in a similar situation. He is a walking disaster. Mentally unstable, a nuisance to himself and to others.

He has been housed for five years but still lives the life of a homeless person. He simply no longer sleeps rough. His flat is full of last week's takeaway wrappings. Sometimes he remembers to charge up his electric key. Most times he is in the dark.

He lived in a hostel for a while and had to behave. But he was never 'cured'. And so, when he was rehoused, his existence was always going to be that of a sustained victim.

He never eats properly or sleeps through the night, is jobless and unemployable. But, as far as some homeless agencies are concerned, he's been 'successfully rehoused'.

It shows just how much the system masks the problem - to the tune of an estimated £60,000 a year in Bill's case.

There are countless people who manage to escape homelessness. But you have to be stable before you can be transformed. The really ill can't be helped. Jim had hundreds of thousands spent on him with little result. His life was wasted along with the money.

He needed to be treated as a mental health patient. He, like thousands of others, had his life decimated by addiction. He needed to be institutionalised and treated.

Mollycoddling doesn't work. I'm not interested in giving people the benefit of the doubt. I'm interested in saving lives.

Mental illness doesn't account for 100 per cent of the homeless problem. But it accounts for the vast majority of it. I hope my film will get people thinking about the real nature of the problem and how we can end it rather than continue to pay money to perpetuate it.

John Bird is co-founder with Gordon Roddick of The Big Issue and is its editor-in-chief.

The Insider: Get Tough With The Homeless is on Channel 4 at 7.30pm on Friday.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Glossaries on research, evaluation, planning, and communications

Monday, February 26, 2007

Methadone emerges as new killer - Los Angeles Times

Methadone emerges as new killer - Los Angeles Times

Methadone emerges as new killer
Patients and addicts are mixing the opiate with other drugs, as did Anna Nicole Smith's son.
By Charles Proctor, Times Staff Writer
February 26, 2007

Drug's victims?
click to enlarge

Deadly high
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Related Stories
- Painkiller is effective but can be deadly
Methadone, a potent opiate once used almost exclusively to treat heroin addicts, is increasingly being prescribed by doctors as a pain medication and abused by drug users searching for a cheap, easy way to get high, physicians and federal drug officials say.

The drug, which comes in pill or liquid form, recently has come under scrutiny in the death of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith. A doctor in Studio City prescribed methadone to Smith for pain treatment before she was found dead Feb. 8 in her Hollywood, Fla., hotel suite.

A coroner has yet to determine her cause of death, and the doctor said his treatment was "medically sound and appropriate."

Months earlier, Smith's 20-year-old son died in the Bahamas after taking a lethal mixture of methadone and two antidepressants, Zoloft and Lexapro.

Well before these deaths, however, drug counselors and clinicians were concerned about increased abuse of the drug on the streets, in group homes and even in middle schools.

It is an ironic turn in the history of methadone, which for years has been used to treat heroin addiction.

A synthetic opiate, methadone is similar to heroin in chemistry, curbing a user's craving for the illegal opiate by blocking the sensors that heroin stimulates without producing a heroin high.

In recent years, methadone has proved lethal to a growing number of patients or addicts who use it in conjunction with prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax or, in the case of addicts, illegal narcotics such as cocaine.

Sometimes users swallow methadone before or after they "puff," when they seek to get high by slowly inhaling the chemicals from an aerosol can.

"Every year, we see hundreds of these deaths, and the numbers continue to increase," said Bruce Goldberger, director of toxicology at the University of Florida, who has been at the forefront of tracking methadone-related deaths. "It is absolutely the fastest-growing drug problem."

A federal government study found that nationwide methadone-related deaths climbed to more than 3,800 in 2004 from about 780 in 1999. Among all narcotic-related deaths in 2004, only cocaine killed more people in the United States than methadone.

Physicians and others point out that methadone's potential for abuse isn't as high as that of opiates like heroin because it does not induce a strong euphoria on its own.

But repeated use can still cause a physical dependence, doctors say, and when users stop taking it, withdrawal-like symptoms can occur.

Given its low cost compared with heroin and other drugs, its recent proliferation and its potentially lethal potency when mixed with other drugs, officials worry that methadone is largely evading the scrutiny applied to other abused prescription medications, such as OxyContin and Vicodin.

The drug can be lethal even when mixed with antidepressants, or grapefruit juice, experts and federal drug authorities say.

Methadone can linger in body tissue for an unusually long time — 24 to 59 hours in some cases. Sometimes users assume it has worn off, then take other drugs or more methadone, leading to respiratory depression, coma and eventual death.

Methadone is available at clinics that prescribe it to treat heroin addiction, from doctors who can prescribe it for pain or to treat addictions and, increasingly, as a street drug.

The clinics face stringent federal and state regulations as to how much methadone they can administer to patients, but physicians don't go beyond a general rule that says they can't prescribe more than a 30-day supply, said Mark Parrino, president of the American Assn. for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence.

In Southern California, parts of downtown, East and South Los Angeles have emerged as places to buy and sell methadone, said Kalante Holmes, a counselor at a methadone clinic in West Los Angeles. "It's one of those easy-to-get things right now," he said.

It's the "easy-to-get" nature of the drug that has led to the recent spike in methadone deaths, experts and government officials say.

As the study of pain has grown over the last five to 10 years, more physicians are prescribing methadone to patients to treat pain, especially chronic and nerve pain.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning in November to all physicians saying that misuse of the drug could lead to breathing problems and possible death.

Patients might prefer methadone to other painkillers because not only is it powerful, but it's also less expensive.

For example, a pharmacy can buy a month's supply of methadone for one patient for as little as $8, whereas it would have to pay more than $170 for a similar amount of OxyContin, according to wholesale pharmaceutical price books.

As the availability of the drug increases, so does abuse and misuse of it, experts and drug officials say. Problems usually don't arise from physicians who specialize in pain treatment and know how to safely prescribe and monitor methadone use, but from general and family practice physicians who may prescribe the drug more often than they should.

"My hunch is that some of what we're seeing with the current problems are the administration of [methadone] by physicians who don't understand how powerful it is to a patient population who might not necessarily need it," said Richard Rawson, an associate director of Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at UCLA.

Data compiled by the federal government show a steady increase in the number of people nationwide admitted to clinics and programs for methadone treatment, from about 1,000 in 1995 to more than 3,700 in 2005.

"This is an emerging problem," said Bertha Madras of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

It's been a persistent problem for people like Sean, 20, a resident of West Los Angeles and a former heroin addict.

Sean, who asked that only his first name be used because of the stigma associated with drug abuse, carved a steady path to heroin use at a young age. He tried marijuana when he was 11, cocaine at 14 and heroin at 17.

When he was 19, living in a downtown L.A. apartment and experiencing heroin withdrawals, he tried methadone.

Mostly, he said, he used it to satiate his desire for heroin. At least once he took it with Klonopin, a muscle relaxant.

"I don't want to say the feeling was similar to alcohol," said Sean, who is in drug treatment and was interviewed in the presence of his counselor. "But that's sort of what it was like. Your body feels relaxed."

Though he said he had not used methadone lately because he'd heard it had been responsible for a rash of deaths, Sean said he could easily get it on the street.

Recently, on a bus in Santa Monica, he was approached by a methadone pusher who offered him a deal: one pill for $45 or two for $60, he said.

Sean said he declined. But he knows it won't be so easy for others.

"The fact of the matter is, if you're a drug addict and you don't want treatment, you're going to go try to get high off something," he said. "You're broke, you can't afford heroin, so you go get methadone."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
charles.proctor@latimes.com

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Report backs end to secure council tenancies | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk

Report backs end to secure council tenancies | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk: "Report backs end to secure council tenancies

Matt Weaver
Tuesday February 20, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Council tenants could be forced to prove they still need their homes in regular means-tested reviews, it emerged today.

The proposal, part of a radical shake-up of housing outlined in a government-commissioned report, would end the right to a home for life by giving people fixed-term tenancies of between one and five years.

Under the plan - which the document admits could 'sound outlandish', tenants would be forced to pay more for their home be asked to buy a stake in the value of the property if their circumstances improved.

If children left home, their parents would be forced to move to smaller properties.

The report, written for the government by Professor John Hills, of the London School of Economics, says such system would help free up homes to those who most need them.

'The ability to move 'empty nest' couples or single people might be a way of reducing overcrowding,' it says.

It concedes that the possible loss of a secure tenancy would be 'controversial', but adds that such a move could be needed in order to 'make better use of very scarce and pressured resources'.

The communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, who c"

An equitable answer? | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk

An equitable answer? | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk: "
Interview
An equitable answer?
Interview
An equitable answer?

Social policy professor John Hills has been wrestling with how we can better use existing social housing to help the most vulnerable make the most of their lives. Alison Benjamin takes him to task on his findings

Wednesday February 21, 2007
The Guardian

Professor John Hills
Professor John Hills

Dressed in a corduroy suit, John Hills, director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics and professor of social policy, looks every inch the academic. Talking ahead of yesterday's launch of his eagerly awaited review on the role social housing can play in 21st-century housing policy, he says he hopes it will "spark off a debate. People may realise the problems are different or the challenges are bigger than they thought, and the policy solutions aren't all in one direction."

Hills' independent review was commissioned by the communities secretary, Ruth Kelly, who wants to know what reforms will ensure that social housing helps wider government objectives such as helping people get on in life, creating mixed communities and reducing inequality.

One solution - which she proposed last week in a speech to the Fabian Society and which would allow council and housing association tenants to buy as little as a 10% equity stake in their homes - is in his report, Ends and Means: The Future Roles of Social Housing in England.

Housing campaigners may well ask why the review promotes social housing as a wealth-creating asset, rather than calling for thousands more council or housing association homes to be built when there are 1.5 million people languishing on waiting lists in England - a rise of 500,000 since this government came to power.

Hills makes it clear that his remit was not about increasing the number of homes but about how the existing stock can be better used. His research, he says, has identified three big challenges facing the sector, and he is adamant that building new homes is not one of them.

"Regardless of if we're building 20,000 or 40,000 or 60,000 new units a year, what is happening to the 3.8m units already here and how well we run them is going to be for a long time to come far more important and deserves a huge amount of attention," he says. "Only to concentrate on new building would be a mistake, and it is one we've made in the past."

Satisfaction levels

The first challenge, he insists, is the quality of service offered by social housing landlords. He points to how dissatisfaction rates have crept up in the past decade: one in seven tenants are unhappy with their local area and accommodation; one in five with their landlord; one in four with the standards of repair and maintenance; and under-45s are the most unhappy with their homes. While he admits that overcrowding is more of a problem for council or housing association tenants than for homeowners, or people renting privately, his suggestion to improve satisfaction levels is to give tenants more of a say in how their housing is run.

The second challenge Hills identifies is mixed communities. "Because two-thirds of social housing is in areas originally built as isolated council estates, and over the last 25 years access into social housing has been increasingly dominated by those in greatest need, you end up with geographical polarisation," he explains. But isn't that what people call ghettos? "I wouldn't call them ghettos," Hills replies.

He suggests social landlords could reverse this polarisation by selling, or renting out commercially, property on their existing estates and using the proceeds to buy property for their tenants to rent in other areas where there is less social housing. But improving the income mix isn't necessarily achieved by swapping people: "It's by helping to ensure people already living there have got a livelihood."

This neatly brings Hills, without so much as a pause, to his third big challenge for social housing: how to get more tenants into work. More than half those of working age living in social housing are without paid work, twice the national rate.

"There you have a real conundrum," says Hills, "because one of the fundamental justifications of having social housing where people pay below market rent is that it should help them in the labour market.If you're paying £60 or £70 a week your take-off point to get clear of the benefit trap is much earlier than if you're paying £180 a week rent in the private sector.

"Even allowing for the fact that social housing tenants are disadvantaged in the job market because they are lone parents, or lack qualifications, or suffer from high levels of ill health and disability, there are still fewer in work than you would expect."

"Think through the consequences," he urges. "If you are living on an estate and have two people of working age on either side of you, the chances of them both working is just one in 10. That can have devastating effects on links into job markets. It's one reason why social housing is so concentrated in low-income areas now. Half of social housing is in the most deprived fifth of areas."

Hills wants housing support offered at job centres and help with finding work at the housing office. I point out that the £300-a-week rent charged for temporary accommodation in London is the main barrier to homeless families working, and makes it hard for them to then get a job when they do move into social housing years later, and he concedes that "some aspects of housing policy are unhelpful".

He also acknowledges that pressures in social housing have got "much, much tougher" than when he was last asked to examine the sector seven years ago as part of a forum set up by the Institute of Public Policy Reform think tank.

He attributes the pressure to a lack of turnover in the stock, which he says is the result of rising house prices stopping tenants moving out and a change in the tenants' age profile, so fewer tenancies are coming up as older tenants die. This translates into 80,000 fewer relets a year. "Despite 50,000 fewer social housing units being built and the Right to Buy reducing the pool of council homes, we were still able to take 250,000 new households throughout the 70, 80 and 90s," says Hills. "But when you at look at 2000, it has come down to 170,000. This leads to almost the whole system being gummed up. What we have is a pressure cooker effect."

Hills is concerned that this leads to what he calls a "strikingly" low level of job-related mobility. While nationally one-in-eight moves is associated with work, only a few thousand social tenants each year can move to be nearer a new job.

So why not just build millions of new social homes? Even Kelly acknowledged last week that the government needs to build more than the current supply of 30,000 homes per year, and she said "ambitious" plans for increasing social housing would be set out as part of the 2007 comprehensive spending review.

"The amount of social housing we have as a country depends on how much we are prepared to spend," Hills responds. "Yes, the more social housing we have the less the pressure on the pressure cooker, but with the best will in the world we're not going to build hundreds of thousands of new units every year to replace the 1.9m lost under Right to Buy."

Why not? As an economist, Hills answers by doing the maths. It costs £60k of public subsidy to build a social housing unit, so that's £60m for every 10,000 units. Yet he dismisses any notion that the social cost of housing thousands of families in temporary or overcrowded accommodation could be more expensive. "You can make a good case for building to make up the shortfall of units we lost through relets, but you're doing that to standstill, so we're still left with the questions - how do we make the best use of the stock we've got and how do you best support the livelihoods of the tenants there?"

Hills is keen for a significant expansion in local cost homes that people can part-rent, part-buy. They cost the public purse half that of building a new unit of social housing, he points out, yet they account for just 1% of the owner-occupied stock.

They are one item on a menu of options he suggests could be offered to would-be social housing tenants. Others include a 10% equity stake for existing tenants that is being piloted in west London by Notting Hill Housing. Does this mean that Hills believes that, as tenants' financial circumstances improve, they should no longer be entitled to cheap rents? "If you are serious about trying to increase the livelihoods of tenants, you have to be careful not to set up disincentives," he warns.

The review has opened Hills' eyes to the growing wealth inequality between home owners and tenants. He predicts that cascading housing wealth from generation to generation will further increase divisions. Equity schemes therefore makes sense in the context of a government with ambitious targets for poverty and inequality. "If you are worried about wealth inequality," he says, "then doing something about the asset levels of social tenants is a pretty well-targeted way of doing it."

· Read Ends and Means

Curriculum Vitae

Age 52.

Status Married.

Lives Highbury, north London.

Education Nottingham high school; Abingdon school, Oxfordshire; Cambridge University, BA economics; Birmingham University, MSocSc economics.

Career 1997-present professor, social policy, London School of Economics, and director, ESRC Research Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE; 1994-97: reader in economics and social policy, LSE; 1986-97: senior research fellow/co-director, welfare state programme, LSE; 1984-86: senior adviser to commission of inquiry into taxation, Zimbabwe; 1982-84: senior research officer, Institute for Fiscal Studies; 1980-82: economist, Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee; 1979-80: senior economic assistant, Department of the Environment; 1976-78: fellow of the Overseas Development Institute; 1976-78: research assistant, department of applied economics, Cambridge University; 1973-76: research assistant, European Atomic Energy Commission Institute for Transuranium Elements.

Interests Fell walking."

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Arlington House

Novas Group - Arlington House: "Arlington, which celebrated its 100th birthday in 2005, remains one of the most significant social housing resources in the country.

Over the last century Arlington has been a symbol of Victorian philanthropy and social welfare support for working men, a resource for soldiers and refugees during the two World Wars, a major lodging resource for Irish men working in London during the economic boom of the 1960-70's and recently a provider of high quality support and care services to a diverse range of individual needs from homelessness, dependency to frailty due to old age.

The building is a landmark in Camden Town and a major contributor to the life, character and economy of the local area.

Over this period of time the aspirations of residents have changed and while excellent services are provided there is recognition that the physical environment and fabric of the building is outdated and difficult to maintain. A review by key stakeholders has started to consider the role of Arlington over the next 100 years.

It is agreed that the building requires major refurbishment providing greater privacy and personal space for customers and a need to move away from just providing a bed and looking after physical needs of people experiencing homelessness. A huge leap into the 21st century is required, meeting the employment, educational and creative potential of residents and"

Friday, February 16, 2007

New threat to social homes

New threat to social homes

13 February 2007

A statement from Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has raised fears that the number of social homes in the UK - council houses and tenants association properties - could be under renewed threat.

The Communities Secretary says consideration is being given to proposals that would allow social housing tenants the opportunity to get on the property ladder by buying a smaller stake in their home than at present - stumping up 10 per cent of the value instead of the current 25 per cent.

She told the Today programme that this would help close the gap between people who are aided by their parents to buy their first home and those who are not.

But Shelter's chief executive Adam Sampson said: 'We're talking about something that is at best irrelevant to the housing crisis and at worst could exacerbate it.

'Helping poorer people share in the nation's wealth is welcome - but this measure will only help around five per cent of current social tenants.'

At present, more than half of social housing tenants have an annual income of less than £10,000.

Since the introduction of the Right to Buy scheme in 1980, more than 1,700,000 homes have been sold off. But between 1980 and 2005 only 790,342 new social rented homes were built.

Mr Sampson called for a commitment to reinvest any money raised in new social housing. 'Unless the money raised by this scheme is ploughed back into building desperately needed new social homes, it will only serve to exacerbate the existing crisis.'

Today almost 94,000 homeless households - including almost 130,000 children - are trapped in temporary accommodation with nowhere permanent to call home.

Homelessness is estimated to cost between £700 million and £1 billion each year in extra housing costs and wider public costs such as welfare benefits, health, crime and education.

To address these problems, 'Significant investment in increasing the supply of new social housing must be the government's first priority,' Mr Sampson declared.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Smiths helps St Mungo's make London's homeless healthier

Smiths helps St Mungo's make London's homeless healthier
13/11/2006Smiths Current Share Price1076.00p +3.50p

At 14/02/2007 11:38:43

Investor Centre

SMITHS Group, the global technology business, today announced that it is funding a new Health Manager for St Mungo's as part of an initiative to make London’s homeless healthier.

St Mungo's, London’s leading homeless charity, provides practical support for thousands of homeless and vulnerable people each year by helping them find a place to live; develop their skills through education and training programmes; build positive relationships with other people and improve their mental and physical health.

The new Health Manager, who will work across the London boroughs, will train staff on key health issues and build strong relationships with local health authorities to help the charity’s 1,700 residents gain access to vital health services from GPs, hospitals and statutory services.

This training will enable staff to recognise symptoms of serious conditions and will also include awareness of healthy eating, sexual health and access to exercise for all residents.

The cooperation between St Mungo’s and Smiths was launched formally on Thursday 9th November at the Endell Street Hostel in Covent Garden. Keith Butler-Wheelhouse, Chief Executive of Smiths Group, said: ‘We are delighted to be able to contribute towards such an important initiative in our community.”

Homeless people can suffer from poor health due to sleeping rough but are often unable to obtain the health care services they need due to social exclusion.

Kate Whalley, the new Health Manager for St Mungo's, said: “This crucial support from Smiths will enable us to train all our staff about all of these key health issues and help our clients to get the help they need. Given the seriousness of some residents’ health conditions, this work could save around 100 lives each year.”

Smiths is also investigating employee volunteering opportunities with St Mungo’s to benefit both the charity and Smiths people, who can build their skills whilst giving something back to their local community.

ENDS

About St Mungo's

St Mungo's is London’s leading homeless charity, opening doors for thousands of homeless people each year.
Around 88% of their clients have two or more medical support needs. St Mungo's provides specialist help to address the complex physical and mental health problems that many of their most vulnerable clients face. Last year, the charity supported 800 people with their mental health issues, and referred 600 people into rehabilitation and prescribing services. Health clinics are based within several of their larger hostels, which have visiting nursing, dentistry and chiropody services.

Smiths Group

Smiths seeks to contribute to the communities in which it operates by participation in, and support for, community and charitable initiatives. Smiths is a global technology business, listed on the London Stock Exchange. Smiths Group is a world leader in the practical application of advanced technologies. Our products and services make the world safer, healthier and more productive. Smiths Group has four divisions: Aerospace, Detection, Medical and Specialty. It employs 32,000 people and has over 250 major facilities in 50 countries. For more information visit www.smiths-group.com

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Islington Tribune - News: Town Hall to shut hostels no longer fit for homeless

Islington Tribune - News: Town Hall to shut hostels no longer fit for homeless: "
Islington Tribune - by MARK BLUNDEN
Published: 9 February 2007

Town Hall to shut hostels no longer fit for homeless

Years of neglect blamed as closure opens way for homes on sites

TWO homeless hostels in Highbury are to close next month after being left without essential maintenance for so long they are rotting away.
After final approval last week, the hostels in Petherton Road and Grosvenor Avenue will shut so the sites can be sold for affordable housing.
For years the hostels, known as “reception centres”, have been excluded from cyclical maintenance programmes, with electrical wiring at Grosvenor Avenue so out of date that one resident claims power cuts are a frequent occurence.
Experts commissioned by the Town Hall found it would cost more than £7 million to bring the hostels – and another which is not due to close – up to modern standards.
An executive briefing document, dated October 2005, states: “The lack of maintenance over the past 30 years has contributed to the poor living environment. The quality of the accommodation provided in the centres does not meet the council’s medium or long-term aims.”
Islington currently has nine homeless hostels, with 304 rooms. They employ 26 staff and are run by Homes for Islington, the company in charge of the borough’s housing.
Notices have been pinned to the doors of people living in the Grosvenor Avenue hostel telling them to be out by next month.
One Grosvenor Avenue resident claims the council is winding down maintenance for the block as it prepares for closure.
The man, a reformed drug user, was taken in after seeking refuge from intimidating dealers. He said: “They put the heating back on now but it took them some time.
“This place is scruffy with paint peeling off everywhere and lots of cobwebs. I just hope they can find me somewhere safer, preferably away from the area.”
The man, who did not wish to be named, added: “But it’s the families who are here I feel sorry for. They’re going to have to uproot them to entirely different places. That’s going to be hard on the children.”
Money from the sale of Grosvenor Avenue and Petherton Road hostels will be ploughed back into providing better services at the remaining seven centres.
The two centres to close were not the “worst of the worst”. Three other centres were singled out in the October 2005 report as being in a worse condition.
It is unclear what the future of these centres – known in reports as Herongate, Peregrine House and Hornsey Road – will be until the money from the hostels’ sale is secured. Plans to close the Highbury centres and sell the sites were rubber-stamped at last week’s council overview committee and will be sent back to the executive for final approval.
Cllr Terry Stacy, Islington Council’s Executive Member for Housing and Communities, said: “There are 13 people staying at Grosvenor Avenue – none of them will be left homeless when the building is sold.
“Our strong track record tackling homelessness means there are now fewer people coming into hostels. What Islington really needs is more affordable permanent housing.”

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Saturday, February 10, 2007

Paraplegic 'dumped' on skid row

Paraplegic allegedly 'dumped' on skid row

L.A. police say man was dropped off in front of dozens of witnesses by van linked to Hollywood Presbyterian hospital.

By Andrew Blankstein and Richard Winton, Times Staff Writers
February 9, 2007

Skid Row

click to enlarge

'I can't think of anything colder than that.'

— LAPD Det. Russ Long, on the alleged skid row dumping

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A paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in a gutter in skid row in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being dumped in the street by a Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center van, police said.

The incident, witnessed by more than two dozen people, was described by police as a particularly outrageous case of "homeless dumping" that has plagued the downtown area.

"I can't think of anything colder than that," said LAPD Det. Russ Long, who called the case the most egregious of its kind that he has seen in his career. "There was no mission around, no services. It's the worst area of skid row."

Los Angeles Police Department detectives said they connected the van to Hollywood Presbyterian after witnesses wrote down a phone number on the van and took down its license-plate number.

They are questioning officials from the hospital, which the LAPD had accused in an earlier dumping case that is now under investigation.

Witnesses shouted at the female driver of the van, "Where's his wheelchair, where's his walker?"

Gary Lett, an employee at Gladys Park, near where the incident occurred, said the woman driving the van didn't reply, but proceeded to apply makeup and perfume before driving off.

"She didn't make any attempt to help him," Lett said. "He was in bad shape. He was incoherent."

Kaylor Shemberger, executive vice president for Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, said, "Obviously we are very concerned about the information that has been presented to us. We are continuing to investigate the incident. If some of the facts are correct, it is clearly not in line with our policy of handling these types of patients."

When the hospital was previously accused of dumping in 2005, a top executive said the facility takes discharged patients to Los Angeles Mission at their request.

The case comes three months after the L.A. city attorney's office filed the first indictment for homeless dumping against Kaiser Permanente. The charges stem from an incident earlier last year when a 63-year-old patient from Kaiser Permanente's Bellflower medical center was videotaped as she stepped from a taxi in gown and socks and then wandered the streets of skid row.

Los Angeles officials have accused more than a dozen hospitals, as well as some outside law enforcement agencies, of dumping patients and criminals on downtown's troubled skid row. The city attorney's office said it was considering filing charges against several other medical facilities.

Police describe the homeless people who congregate around Gladys Park, in the heart of skid row, as a tough crowd who have seen much and say little.

But there was no shortage of people willing to describe what they saw about 10:45 a.m. Thursday morning, when the white hospital van pulled up several feet from the curb.

"They were lining up to give their story," Long said. "They were collectively appalled. We were as shocked as the homeless folks."

Witnesses told police that the man propped himself up in the door of the van. He then hurled himself from the vehicle, tumbling to the street. He pulled himself along, dragging a bag of his belongings in his clenched teeth.

Police said several people began shouting at the driver, who in addition to applying makeup was more concerned that the seats of the van had been soiled, investigators said.

LAPD Officers Eric de la Cruz and Pernell Taylor said they arrived to find the man being carried out of the street on a chair that had been retrieved from the nearby park offices.

De la Cruz later asked the victim if he had wanted to be dropped off at the location.

"He said he had nowhere else to go, and the hospital staff told him he could no longer stay there," De la Cruz said of the man, who is being treated at County-USC Medical Center.

The LAPD has accused several hospitals of dumping patients on skid row over the last two years, including Kaiser's West Los Angeles hospital, Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center and Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center.

Officials at those hospitals have denied dumping patients, but some said they had taken homeless patients to skid row service providers.

In 2005, at attorney for Hollywood Presbyterian denied that the hospital had dumped patients, but he said skid row service providers offered treatment and care for some patients who had nowhere else to go.

City officials are trying to crack down on crime and blight in the district, which has the largest concentration of homeless people in the western United States. In recent months, a police crackdown has resulted in more than 1,000 arrests and a drop in crime.

Monday, February 05, 2007

House of Commons

House of Commons
Friday 2 February 2007

Emily Thornberry (Islington, South and Finsbury) (Lab): What would the hon. Lady say to people in my constituency, which has the least amount of green space in the whole of Britain, and where 13,000 families are on the waiting list for housing? What hope does her Bill offer those of my constituents who have been waiting for many years for housing?

Mrs. Spelman: I can give some comfort to the hon. Lady on protecting the small residue of green space that remains in many urban constituencies. The point of my Bill is that it would increase her local council’s capacity to protect what little green space she has. If she reads her own party’s most recent guidance, she will find that the preservation of open space is not referred to and that gardens are spoken about only in relation to new build. Just as she has 13,000 people on the housing waiting list in her constituency, I have 7,000 people in mine. I expect that her constituents, like mine, face the problem that flats built on the back gardens of Victorian properties are often beyond the pocket of those on the waiting list.

I have made it clear from the outset that I do not believe, and have never said, that the Government set out to develop back gardens. It is the unintended consequence of three different elements of their planning policy coming together. Rectifying the unintended consequence of back gardens being classified as brownfield, and thereby getting caught up in its prioritisation, would direct developers to genuine brownfield sites. There are many such sites in my constituency and in the city of Birmingham, which my constituency shoulders—and, I suspect, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). In that way, more affordable housing could be brought into the supply.

House of Commons

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Blair on the street?

Blair interviewed for second time | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics: "Blair interviewed for second time

Matthew Tempest and agencies
Thursday February 1, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

A police officer outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday February 1 2007. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA Wire.
A police officer outside 10 Downing Street on Thursday February 1 2007. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/PA Wire. "

Homeless

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Big Issue founder says 'lock up the homeless' | the Daily Mail

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Glossaries on research, evaluation, planning, and communications

Monday, February 26, 2007

Methadone emerges as new killer - Los Angeles Times

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Report backs end to secure council tenancies | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk

An equitable answer? | Communities | SocietyGuardian.co.uk

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Arlington House

Friday, February 16, 2007

New threat to social homes

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Smiths helps St Mungo's make London's homeless healthier

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Islington Tribune - News: Town Hall to shut hostels no longer fit for homeless

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Paraplegic 'dumped' on skid row

Paraplegic allegedly 'dumped' on skid row

Monday, February 05, 2007

House of Commons

House of Commons

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Blair on the street?

Are you homeless or at risk of being homeless?

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