BIG SOCIETY IN SWINDON: Serving up food for thought

Sitting around three tables in the hall are 20 or so people quietly lapping up the meals in front of them.

Conversation is sparse, a couple of the guys stare intently at their plates, caught in their own little worlds.

This is the Broad Green Breakfast Club, which was set up in 1992 to help the homeless in Swindon – a mixture of rough sleepers and sofa surfers.

Six days a week, except Sundays, they are able to get a cooked breakfast, as well as support and advice.

The club is managed by a committee of trustees, workers and volunteers, and costs £20,000 a year to run.

Nas used to be a client here 15 years ago. Now he works with those less fortunate.

“I come here to give them moral support to hopefully signpost them to a better way of life,” said Nas in his Scottish brogue.

“My life has changed tremendously because of the help I got from the Breakfast Club.”

Nas said he was a compulsive gambler, and lost his family because of it. He upped sticks from Oxford and came to Swindon with nowhere to go.

He was picking up cigarettes in the streets,wearing dirty old clothes, he didn’t have a job.

“I was living in a bedsit, living from day to day,” he said. “My subsistence for food was coming to the breakfast club in the mornings, as I had no money for anything like food or clothes. Now and again they provide donated clothes in here for people.

“I knew there was a way out and I had to change. I was fortunate enough to find the Breakfast Club which helped me to start off in a new lifestyle.

“It helped to raise my self esteem. Apart from somewhere to go and being with people, whether I liked to be with them or not, it was a place which signposted me to various places and encouraged us.

“I knew this was a place where I shouldn’t be. I come from a decent family, and so to come down to this level in my life was just not on. I had to kick myself out of it.”

That is something which Nas managed to do with commitment, perseverance and hard work.

Now he feels it is his chance to return the favour.

He helps out in the kitchens, but also comes along in the mornings to speak to those who visit the club.

“Because of my standing in the community I am able to help them with where to go for private housing, give them the names of landlords and advise them through Gamblers’ Anonymous,” he said.

“I can also talk to them, and listen to them. There are a few others here who do that.

All the helpers in the kitchen sit down and have breakfast with them as well. We are all equal.”

Some may write off those who use the Breakfast Club as wasters who deserve what they get. To Nas and the other volunteers these are their brothers and sisters who are less fortunate than them “Anyone who has achieved something in life, or who has a comfortable lifestyle needs to see the other side of Swindon because in life there is something called balance and equality,” said Nas.

“Unfortunately, the people who come in here are at the other end of the scale, who need our help and support.

“These people are my brothers and sisters who are not as fortunate as me but I have got to do my part in looking after them.

“There have been a lot of characters in and out of this place over the years.

“They are the real characters of Swindon who may not be the right characters, walking down the street drunk, and dressed like tramps, but unfortunately you get these people in life and we need to help them out and push them on.

“I have seen a lot of success stories in here, and it is great when they come up to you later and you can say well done.

“They tell you how they’ve stopped coming in and out of prison, stopped drinking, stopped gambling. got a girlfriend or a job. It is just great.”

FEARFUL FOR THE FUTURE

Angus McPherson knows all about those living on the breadline in Swindon – according to recent figures there are 30,500 income-deprived people living in the town.

Besides being the chairman of the trustees of the Broad Green Breakfast Club, he also heads up the trustees to the Soup Run, which is staged out of the Queenstown car park next to the Carfax NHS Medical Centre every Tuesday and Thursday evening.

While Big Society is about volunteering with people helping out over and above their basic jobs, Angus is fearful of the future; fearful that as funding becomes more difficult other agencies will begin to withdraw from helping the most vulnerable in our society.

“We are beginning to see people not able to come down to the breakfast club or the soup run,” he said.

“The mental health team don’t come down as much as they used to, we don’t see the drug workers from one of the other agencies quite as much as we used to – in fact we don’t see them at all now.

“My concern is if those agencies aren’t coming to these things then we are moving towards sustaining people where they are and not moving them on, and at that point we have a real problem.”

He said the soup run is something which happens at the end of the day.

Some of those who come along will have been drinking during the day and will be a little worse for wear. And Angus said they will always be like that unless they get the right support.

“I am very worried about it and I am beginning to challenge these agencies that we have to change this,” he said.

“If all you are doing is sustaining them by feeding them when they could have eaten something during the day and, quite frankly, used the money in a better way, then that is absolutely wrong.

“These people are thinking ‘I’m not going to eat now because I can get a sandwich later at the soup run so I’ll have another can of lager’ – and that can’t be right.

“The Outreach workers are there and it is very much a signposting activity.

“But my big fear of Big Society is that Big Society only works if there are sufficient funds around at the margins to allow these things to happen.”

HINDERED BY HEALTH AND SAFETY

WASHING up is pretty simple, isn’t it? MP Robert Buckland and I found ourselves among the assorted dishes at the Broad Green Breakfast Club, clearing up the remains of fried breakfast, cereals and cups of tea.

The volunteers who help out each morning preparing tables, cooking, serving and doing the washing up are a wily bunch, who have washed a few plates in their time.

So both Robert and I were speechless when we learned that to satisfy the latest piece of health and safety legislation,six Broad Green staff had to go on a training course to learn about washing up – at £50 a throw!

The South Swindon MP, admitted that for Big Society to be fully embraced then Government has to remove some of the obstacles to volunteering. He believes the health and safety culture in this country has been allowed to get out of control in recent years.

What we saw at the Broad Green Breakfast Club is having a big impact on them and other charities when their finances are being squeezed.

“Quite properly, things like safeguarding children and checking criminal records should be done for the reassurance of parents and carers,” he said.

“But I think a society that can allow over 10 million people to potentially be checked for activities as innocuous as providing legal advice to a child or having no physical contact with a child, such as a builder visiting a school, is ridiculous.”

Robert pointed to Government legislation which he believes will re-balance this problem, restricting those activities which will require automatic Criminal Records Bureau checks.

There will also be an end to constant re-registering for different activities. He said he was alarmed at what he heard at Broad Green.

“This is the sort of example I will be taking back with me to Westminster and using as an example of how this health and safety culture has gone too far.”