Yesterday saw the start of this year’s ​ with St Martin-in-the-Fields. In this post, Radio 4 producer Kate Howells explains how the appeal started and how this year's broadcast was produced.
The relationship between Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio and St Martin-in-the-Fields goes back a remarkably long way with St Martin’s broadcasting a radio Christmas Appeal for its work with homeless people for 89 years, although I have been the Radio 4 producer of the appeal for just the last three.
While the nature and extent of homelessness may have changed in that time, the causes are similar: relationship breakdown, job loss, mental illness or a toxic combination of several.
Glen, who I met at the Connection at St Martin’s, put it vividly. He said: "Within one month, I lost my dad - who was very close to me, my marriage broke down and I was made redundant. It’s like standing in the middle of a roundabout and getting hit from every side."
It’s talking to people like Glen which shows that it really can happen to anyone. And that everyone it has happened to needs patient, expert, long-term help to get out of it. And that’s what the Connection at St Martin’s provides.
It’s a day centre and night shelter for homeless people at the side of Trafalgar Square, next to the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields.
Half of the money raised each year by the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal goes towards the work of the Connection, which starts with the Outreach Team who go out into the streets and talk to homeless people.
They can talk to someone over months or even years before winning their trust and persuading them to come in to the centre to have their needs assessed. Ö÷²¥´óÐãless people have often lost their faith in other human beings so this takes skill and patience as well as time.
Dennis, who I met at the Connection, acknowledges that distrust and suspicion made him very difficult to deal with: "In the back of my mind I was thinking 'what do they want from me?' It took me a long time to realise that they didn’t want anything from me, other than for me to go away, but to go away in a nice way."
After sleeping rough on and off for six years, Dennis was given help at the Connection to find suitable housing and he now has his own flat.
"This place lives up to its name, Connections. It’s building bridges…it helps people feel not alone. That there is somebody out there who loves them, and sometimes it’s not easy because we’re quite stubborn really!" said Dennis.
Once people come to the Connection, there’s warm food and showers and washing machines. Kaz is one of the Deputy Day Centre Managers and she stresses it’s not a place of inertia.
She said the aim is to help people move on from homelessness: "Nobody just sits and gets ignored, or can hide. This is a place of action, it’s about helping people move on in their lives."
Dennis took part in the Step Up volunteering programme, working in the kitchen where he rediscovered a great talent for baking.
What’s really struck me is the way this place reconnects people to the talents and interests they had before homelessness. Charities over-use the phrase 'rebuilding lives', but here I’ve seen it in action.
One misapprehension Radio 4 listeners sometimes have is that money they donate will only benefit homeless people in London.
This is far from the truth, because half of the donations go to the Vicar’s Relief Fund, (VRF) St Martin’s other charity. This enables crisis grants of up to £250 to be given to people round the country who are homeless or who are in danger of homelessness.
The Revd Dr Sam Wells, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, explained: "They may find no-one is prepared to give them a flat because they can’t put down a deposit. Well we can help with that. If their support worker calls us and says a £200 deposit on a flat would make all the difference, we trust them.
"Where else are they going to get that £200 from?
"They’re not going to get a flat and if you don’t get the first foot on the ladder, you could get nowhere. The VRF is about bridging gaps between good intentions of people involved in the system, and the understandable scepticism of a landlord who has been let down before."
What makes it so precious is that the grant applications, which are made by housing and social workers on behalf of their vulnerable clients, can usually be turned round with 36 hours. With a grant from the Vicar’s Relief Fund, Ian had just moved into a flat in Morecambe when we visited him.
"The burden of the last three years feels like it’s been lifted," explains Ian. "I’ve got something back which I’d lost, a bit of a purpose. I still feel like I’ve got something to give. I’m only 55, I don’t feel that it’s over…I’ve really got a chance to start again, and I will."
The theme of this year’s Christmas Appeal​ is Pay Attention. ​
The words come from the French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil, who wrote that those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world, but people capable of giving them their attention… Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Sam Wells says we don’t all have the time and skill to give homeless people the attention they need. St Martin’s does.
So do pay attention to the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal this year, and to homeless people.