Where From? Where Now?

Drowning out the noise

I kept wondering when I was out on night shifts with outreach teams why some people choose to sleep right by main roads where there are constant horns, sirens, revs of cars…

I met up with Kath Sims, who has worked in the homeless sector for the past four and half years (at times working specifically with women) and is now with St Mungo’s Outreach Team in Westminster. We went out in Central London to places where she often sees women sleeping.  This question came up again when there was a ledge outside a Tescos  (see photo) where a woman had been seen on a regular basis (she is now off the streets).

Kath explained: “It is not a normal place that anyone would bed down. There’s no shelter. But there has been a lady who has been here for over eight months, sitting upright on one of the ledges. She had severe and enduring mental health problems. We thought because she was there every night but refused to engage with us it must have been the noise of the traffic and the cars that were the calming influence on her.”

“For people that don’t actually want to engage with services, to make themselves very visible every single night makes you wonder why they are sitting there. You find it a lot with people who suffer with schizophrenia and voices. They tend to sleep in very busy places, places that don’t really give shelter but drown out the voices in their head, whatever is going on at that time for them.  So they will choose areas in central London, big roads, that are quite exposed and generally don’t have a high influx of rough sleepers.”

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2011 at 7:51 am. It is filed under blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.