Working with The Homeless: Why Do We Do It?

I would like to start this article by saying that I have in the past helped the homeless in a number of different ways.

Some of us feel community minded enough to be able to go out and help those in the most dangerous and most difficult groups in a first world country. I am of course talking about the homeless. Just why do we feel the urge to help them, when in most cases they do not want to be helped or help themselves.

I have spent a great deal of time teaching the homeless skills they can use to get a job, helping them find housing within their home areas, and providing them with access to clothing donated by individuals and organsations in the local area. Unfortunately that has also left me to think that a majority of the people that I have worked with do not actually want to help themselves, whether it is because they have larger problems that I or any of the other people around me at such times are equipped to deal with or whether it is because it has become such a way of life that they would not know how to do anything else, I am not overly sure, but I am sure that a majority of the homeless people I have had contact with reject any form of help and support other than a meal and occassionally a bed for the night.

A lot of people feel that if they can do something to help the homeless community then it is a good thing, however for those that have direct contact with that same community, a majority of the members of said community would willingly reject such help if it were freely offered.

However whilst the homeless problem in the UK is widely publicised, it is heavily ignored by some of the better off amoungst us. They look at the headlines in the newspapers, and seem to be of the opinion that the problem doesn’t exist, and that it is all about selling newspapers. Whilst the ability to sell a newspaper is no doubt in the minds of the editors when they write these articles, just as it is when I write this article, it is not the sole reason. Shedding light on the overall homeless problem is something that we do need to be able to do on a regular basis, and even more so given the current financial climate. People are giving less and less to charity, for instance one charity that I have been lucky enough to work with in the past largely relies on public donations to survive. These guys truly are mircale workers, and provide a lot of help and support to those who need it most.

Whilst those out there that ignore this problem provide the homeless with less hope, the majority of people that try to do their bit to help the homeless provide these individuals with the hope and this is what keeps them going.