interesting points, gill ~ yet, when ‘we’ have looked at this many initiatives add to the permanence of homelessness ratherthan addressing it see Josh Burraway, Intoxicating Ethics for a critical take on the services and issues.

this article captures the essence of tragic lives
however it papers overs the lack of kindness and compassion shown by families and wider society to those who struggle.
prisons can also perpetuate the trauma and some ‘so called’professionals use big words to explain simple concepts.
we can and should do more, we have the resources, it’s the little acts of kindness that help people not forced interventions by statutory services

Executive brain function is also impacted by indifference and systemic invalidation and the additional societal attitudinal injury to an already injurious life position that is so readily perpetuated and equally easily changed with an ordinary expectation of kindness and compassion based work.

As ever though the process of re-conceptualisation of the issues raised in this article must also balance the notions of an implicit social and personal inadequacy with the structural inadequacies of a failure in how access to accommodation and housing remains the persistent problem.

Keirkegaardian notions are also and inevitably based on a white protestant world view; that equity groups like Waterland, a Danish Group,are now funding primary care to a huge extent and with a regional if not national market share, and this too must also be weighed in the mix.

Homelessness, has always been a cash cow and the repeated policy attempts to tame the financial exploitation of this have to date failed, and miserably so.

Manchester has a good historical track record in altering perception and practice going back decades ~ I am thinking of the Peterloo Project and I would hope that this work, acknowledging the structural and financial issues, gains credence. The idea and practice of therapeutic communities while old hat for old dogs like me does actually work.

For more on such see Peter Rollins and Julie Reshe.

This said, our own learning mustn’t ignore the case for ‘conviviality’ made within the industry in 1997 ~ when attempts were made through a broader alignment of resources targeted at the prevention of the collapse of families and communities, and literally on a street-street level (the super output area’s) through life-long learning and family centres. David Blunketts, time as SofS for Education was successful in the radicalisation of a fresh approach to such.

Let’s see if Bridget Philipson can do something similar. The mind set here must be though harnessed to the correct economic drivers and if connections are made to the idea of economic transitivity* aimed specifically at women and children then the impact could be truly mind blowing.

*economic transitivity simply states that by bringing the health needs of marginal groups upto the levels of the wider population brings benefits to both ~ without health and welfare economic drivers, as signifiers for change, at population level the advantages of the neurosciences will not gain traction*