At our September meeting, we heard from Lamorna Hooker from St Mungo’s, the charity that works to support people with their recovery from homelessness.
The charity started in 1969, with a small group of people offering food and what help they could. Its first hostel was in a Marmite factory in Vauxhall. The story of the name is that one of the founding volunteers came from Glasgow, which has St Mungo as its patron saint.
Last year, St Mungo’s provided bed and support to 3,150 people every day and helped almost 33,000 people with housing, health, skills and employment. It has a network of clients who play a crucial role in its decision-making and implementation processes, and staff with lived experience of homelessness.
On the streets, women are vulnerable to violence, harassment, weather and tend to have severe and interrelated problems that make recovery difficult. Women are often hidden, which makes them hard to count in statistics and hard to reach.
St Mungo’s work covers three areas:
Emergency projects include outreach, a severe weather emergency project and working in prisons as a bridge between the criminal justice system and services.
Accommodation spans emergency help, supported independent living and care homes for the elderly, with a focus on recovery and wraparound support.
Recovery projects are the USP of St Mungo’s. It has a Recovery College, a skills and employment programme and emotional support. Its hugely popular gardening projects include a London garden designed by Jekka McVicar.
During the pandemic, St Mungos has been part of the Everyone In scheme, managed 30 hotels, helped more than 4,000 people to isolate safely and 80% of its frontline services have continued to operate.
How you can get involved:
- Fundraise
- Volunteer
- Campaign with St Mungos, for instance by writing to your MP
- Download the Streetlink app, which you can use to note the location and description of a rough sleeper so that services can find and help them
Many thanks to Lamorna for her interesting and insightful talk.
We also heard from East End WI member Jakki, who worked in social housing for 40 years before retiring five years ago.
Jakki spent some years working for Housing for Women, founded in the 1930s by people who understood that women were disadvantaged, largely through income. Housing for Women provides low-cost permanent housing, a sanctuary scheme, works with women leaving prison, particularly in addressing the catch-22 of housing women being reunited with their children, and with trafficked women.
One positive note from each:
Lamorna: St Mungo’s is one of the only homelessness charities that will accept dogs. There is a heartening case study on the St Mungo’s website about former client Susan and her dog Lady, pictured above.
Jakki: on its website, Housing for Women welcomes the Domestic Abuse Act, a recent act of Parliament, as a step in the right direction.
…and a book recommendation from Lamorna: The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn.
Our next coffee mornings:
15th October 2021 at 11.00am at Chirunguito café, Museum Gardens, Bethnal Green, E2 9PA
Our next meeting, on 21st October, at 7pm for 7.30, will have Kathleen Sherit talking about women in the armed forces. This is planned to be an in-person meeting, back at St Margaret’s House. The usual Covid precautions will apply: please don't come if you feel unwell, the doors will be open, there will be sanitiser and if you prefer to wear a mask, please do.
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