Health and social care is one of the largest volunteering sectors in the UK. This includes organisations like the NHS and charities which improve the wellbeing of people of all ages. So what do helpers actually get involved with? The opportunities are more diverse than we imagined as our bloggers reveal.

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Friday Jun 18, 2010

The very very least I could do

Ive been neglecting this blog for a few weeks and for that I can only apologise.

Last night was really really really busy. Today I am exhausted. Two hours of washing up and an hour and half of chopping onions and garlic is terribly tiring. This is the unglamorous side of volunteering in all its glory.

Some people perhaps wouldn’t want to spend their Thursday evenings washing up 50 peoples dirty dishes, or chopping thirty onions and 12 bulbs of garlic. I wouldn’t have ever said that these would do it for me. But you know what? I wouldn’t want to spend my Thursdays doing anything else now.  

Last night was a bit sad for me, washing up and onions aside, one of my favorite guests is leaving the shelter. He has managed to find a house and is moving in today. This is excellent news for him but incredibly sad for me. He has become one of the regular faces in my life that I look forward to seeing. If I'm sad and fed up he makes me smile, and if I make a mistake he laughs with me. He is a very cheery person and he will be missed by all of us volunteers. But I'm very happy for him and he seems very excited by his move. I will be looking forward to hearing all about it when he comes in to visit us.

His situation has confirmed in my mind why I am doing what I am doing. He had been at the shelter since October and the staff at the shelter have helped give him some stability, support and a safe place to stay while he found a permanent home.

I can not bare to think what would have happened to him if he had been rough sleeping for the last 9 months. Thinking about the possibilities scare me a lot, and yet I know that there is more homeless people sleeping in the streets of London every night. Wikipedia has just told me that in the UK there are 10,459 rough sleepers and  98,750 households in temporary accommodation.

This is a shocking statistic. Homeless can affect anyone and I think that we are all guilty of carrying around a stereotype in our heads about what type of person becomes homeless. We often think of alcoholics, addicts, people that have just come out of prison. I have found, through volunteering, that this is not actually true. Homelessness can affect anyone. Anyone. I heard someone say that you are only ever one paycheque and an unfortunate incident away from loosing your home.

I went on some training recently, for another volunteering role at crisis. We had a session on this subject, and what makes up the Homeless population in the UK and it includes:

• Young people who have just left the care system;
• Men and Women who were previously high earners who lost their jobs, or are homeless due to relationship breakups;
• Ex service men;
• Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers;
• Women escaping domestic violence;
  

The list goes on, and of course it includes addicts, but what I wanted to illustrate is that it can happen to you. It can happen to me. Every guest at the shelter has a different story, some of the guests are from backgrounds similar to mine. Some of them work, the majority want to work. I have heard horrendous stories about people being attacked, physically and verbally, and sexually abused while rough sleeping, and the stories have bought me to tears and kept me awake at night.

If I can play my part to help a charity that is keeping these people safe and giving them stability then I will happily wash up for two hours and chop onions every Thursday night. It’s the least I can do.

Posted by Jenni ( 2:44 PM )
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