For many homeless people, there are often secondary mental health and addiction concerns that affect their ability to seek help. Bournemouth-based charity With You works to change that. Marianna Ciantar, 33, a homeless outreach recovery worker with With You, understands these struggles firsthand. Having battled addiction herself, she has spent the past two and a half years supporting those struggling with homelessness and substance misuse. This interview has been edited for clarity.
How has your perspective evolved over the time you’ve worked within the industry?
I wasn’t aware of a lot of the barriers. Funding is a huge one. Any temporary accommodation, there’s just not a lot of places available for people. It seems to come down to money. They’re working to tight budgets and the criteria for emergency and temporary accommodation are quite high. Someone has to be significantly worse off than the average person on the street to get placed in temporary accommodation. With supported accommodation, there’s just not enough space. It’s a constant backlog; there’s no way for them to move on to create spaces for the neediest. It’s a vicious cycle.
What are the most apparent issues you find when dealing with the people you look after?
Mostly it is mental health support, especially for people in addiction, because the mental health services will not touch them. There are homeless mental health support in Bournemouth, but it’s very limited.
What are some of the common misconceptions people have about homelessness and addiction?
That if someone’s homeless, they’re worthless, they’re a nuisance, they’re a drain on society, or whatever. There are a lot of stereotypes, especially linked to crime.
What are the biggest challenges people in the homeless community experience?
When you’re in homeless addiction, that takes over your whole life. You haven’t had a shower for however long and you’ve got the same clothes on. You’re aware of that. A lot of my clients find it very embarrassing to go into a doctor surgery or somewhere public—because they’re aware of the stigma attached to them by the wider public. There’s no stability, which is a basic human necessity. If you look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, that first foundational level of food, water, warmth and rest… none of that is available when you’re out there on the street. None of their basic needs are being met. So how can anything else be built?
Can you speak of someone you helped reintegrate into society?
For one client, a big barrier was not knowing what a normal life could be like without drugs. We were talking about this quite a lot, getting him to think of things he would like to do, what he would like to try.
One of the things he mentioned was tennis. He wanted to play tennis. So my manager agreed we could go to play a game of tennis, and we just did that. It was great. We had such a laugh, he loved it. I saw a completely different side to him. He was a really anxious person, always with his head down. It was so nice to see that, and give him some hope. It’s just a tennis game for us, but for him he’s done something normal, he’s had a laugh, he’s felt normal for that brief moment.
Share with us some of the most emotionally fulfilling times in your work?
I had another client who had a baby. When she found out she was pregnant she was on the street and she was drinking. She needed a detox, which all came into place as soon as she found out she was pregnant. Now she’s in a foster placement with the baby!
I’ve had clients move into their own flats and be really house-proud, with decorating and keeping it nice. Going over and them making you a coffee is just a really nice moment. You’ve seen them on the street in a terrible, terrible way, close to death, and then you’re in their home, and they’re making you a coffee. That’s a really nice moment.
What have been some of the disheartening moments?
Clients die. I don’t think it can get more tragic than that. It’s really unfortunate, but it has happened, and it does happen, and that’s the reality of addiction.
How does being part of your service serve your clients on an emotional level?
I think from a support level, they feel heard, and they feel they have someone they can rely on. For once in their life, they’re no longer alone; they can lean on us.
What would your message be to the general public regarding homeless people?
They’re human beings who have a past, personalities, hopes and dreams, jobs and skills, interests… More often than not, they are hugely intelligent people. They have been dealt a really bad set of cards. Many of them are just stuck because the system is ineffective at getting them the proper support.
I’ve sat with clients on the street. The looks people were giving them, it’s not nice. They feel dehumanised. It’s almost like we’ve forgotten as a society that they are human beings. I recently had a client go into the council office. There was a security guy just staring him out, basically assuming that he was going to do something. This client felt so uncomfortable that he left. He’d gone to speak to a housing officer, which he had been instructed to do.
My advice to people is just to say ‘hi’. Be kind. Treat them as human beings—a bit more empathy and a lot less judgment.
