OUR PEOPLE: A chance to take breath

When Lady Kay Fisher moved to Norfolk just over 12 years ago, she became a councillor at Breckland and joined the Board of YMCA Norfolk. At the council she has played a key role in advocating the need for housing provision to be tailored for special groups, such as people with mental health problems and sensory disabilities, and both young and old client groups.

 

“Generic housing works 95% of the time, but what about the other 5%?" says Kay. "I have been trying to get them to look more favourably at not just providing bricks and mortar but more social support.”

 

One outcome of this has been the development of a Night Stop scheme at Breckland, where a family or a single person provides a room to a lodger, with YMCA support, to help them through a vulnerable time.

 

“I've been involved recently with a client who was taken in as part of the Night Stop programme. She was thrown out of her home, had a difficult relationship with a chap and then, because she couldn't pay her rent, became bankrupt. She'd go up and hang out on one of the local council estates. Where else could she go? She also had problems with depression. It's a familiar story.

 

“Night Stop gives these young people a breathing space. A family or a person with a spare room provides the nuts and bolts of a roof over their head and a bit of social stability while they get themselves organised for the next stage of their lives. Otherwise they get turfed out of the family home or their foster home, and they're meant to have all these life skills to run a little pad of their own and, of course, they haven't.”

 

Kay has also been involved with the new YMCA accommodation development in central Norwich. This will provide more facilities for young homeless men and women.

 

“They're not just having a roof over their head," says Kay, “but all kinds of training skills. They get social support, and training to learn how to do things like budget and look after themselves.

 

“We don't always have happy endings. But I do think we're making a difference to a number of young people, really quite a number.

 

“They are also coming into contact with a Christian way of life in a very un-pressured way; it's not proselytising, more like faith communicated by action.

 

“Most of us on the Board take our faith seriously. We're not 'do-gooders' in that sense, but it plays a part in what we're doing, and it helps us stay strong when we go through challenging times.”

 

By Liz Day