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Avenue St Andrew’s Church stands on a broad green dual-carriageway leading into Southampton. Its impressive frontage, complete with a huge stainless steel URC logo incorporating the handles of the glass front doors, seems to declare the visible success of a church which has spent around £1m on its building over recent years, the vast majority on upgrading community facilities. But though the houses in the area around the church seem grand, many are now ‘multi-occupancy’, tenanted by a mixture of students, asylum seekers and relatively poor immigrant communities. And as the area has changed, so has the church.
It was around
1986 that some members at Avenue St Andrews became concerned over the
many bed-and-breakfast tenants thrown onto street during the day. With
money from the British Council of Churches a day centre was started
which soon attracted funding from the local council and local health
trust. Minister Cliff Bembridge believes the initiative shown by the
church in setting up the service, putting in its own money and effort
before it sought public funding, paid dividends in terms of trust on the
part of local authorities. Public funding continues nearly 20 years
later but has never kept pace with the costs. As the standards expected
and staff conditions have improved, costs have increased faster than
public funding. When public funds were first granted they covered more
than 90% of the cost. This year the church must find £18,000 of the
£40,000 budget. Finding money is always difficult and is getting more so. Cliff Bembridge ruefully observes that it is easy to get money for cuddly toys but not for wages, even though there is no point in having toys but no staff to supervise children playing with them. It means a constant search for new ideas to keep existing funders happy. The most recent introductions have been training in computer use and the sale of healthy vegetables and fruit at wholesale prices – both admirable in their own right but also attractive because they help to show funders that the project is not stagnating. Local officials are often shamefaced about the stinginess of their provision. They know the centre saves the community huge amounts of money – a single child taken into care could end up costing as much as the support provided to the centre, year-in, year-out until adulthood. They apologize and urge the church not to give up but the rules tie their hands.
A gift from God
The core of the activities of the Avenue Centre are the three weekday morning sessions of the support group. The centre is not a casual drop-in; those who come have been referred by social services or another agency because they are felt to be under pressure and in need of support. Often the needs of the parents – mostly mums – who are referred are quite straightforward. Many live alone in poor accommodation, with very little money: tough enough without the added responsibility of a baby 24 hours a day. The opportunity to place a child, even only for a few hours a week, in the trusted hands of the centre’s high quality nursery and relax with others comes, literally, as a gift from God.
While the toddlers play in an environment which provides them with a rare opportunity to socialize, supervised by well-trained staff always on the lookout for opportunities to boost the children’s sense of their own self-worth, parents have an opportunity to relax, talk and listen. The group, usually all women, is something like a cross between a coffee-morning and a seminar. Sometimes there will be talks on worthy topics like dental hygiene, healthy eating and the like – but some of the best support comes from the mums themselves as they share ways in which they have coped with common problems. There are discussions on parenting skills and the group has recently shared an NHS-designed ‘Quitters’ course to encourage them to stop smoking – though for most, stopping would have to wait waiting until after the pre-wedding hen-party they had arranged for one of their number. It is a sign of how important the group is to them just how much effort had been invested in ensuring that the party was a success. But as the indefatigable Sue Sapsard, the Centre Co-ordinator, points out, for many of them an evening out while a baby-sitter cares for their child is a very rare thing.
A reliable friend
Sue is the kind of reliable friend you would wish for a new and inexperienced mum. A foster-carer of some 27 years standing, she played a similar co-ordinating role in a previous project which ran out of funding. She is an elder at a united URC-Methodist church in the area and knows what it is to go through family difficulties since more than decade ago her son was hit by a speeding motorist and, as a result, lost a leg and suffered serious head injuries. She is open about her beliefs, though she makes it clear to the group that she is not there to preach at them. Nor is she judgemental – she confesses that faced with the kind of problems that many of the group have to deal with in terms of housing, lack of money and difficult family background, she is not at all sure that she would cope as well. Having a co-ordinator who group members like and trust is clearly an essential part of the centre’s success and the relationship extends beyond the group sessions. Joan will visit new members before they have to make the daunting journey to a new and strange building and will often transport them herself the first few times. She considers herself successful when she sees a nervous and stressed new member gradually relax over time and remember how to enjoy herself with others.
The centre is not designed as a long-term retreat but rather to give people some confidence and a chance to improve their parenting skills before gently encouraging them on their way. Some stay for six months, others much longer. Nor is a lengthy stay a sign of failure. Cathy (not her real name) has been around through a long period in which she endured terrible violence from her partner, the stress of life in a women’s shelter and a fresh start at college. She has just earned her European Computer Driving Licence, an EU-wide recognition of competency. Her first use of it has been to become a tutor to others at the centre. The centre often makes use of simple questionnaires to encourage feedback. In answer to one recent question about what she would do without the centre, one member simply answered: ‘Go mad’.
Catch-22
A recent
initiative at the centre has been the Churches Rent Deposit Scheme,
financed by Southampton’s city centre churches. It exists because
homeless people are often caught in an absurd Catch-22 situation where
in order to obtain housing benefit, the state support available to
people without employment, you must have accommodation. But in order to
get accommodation you must pay, up front, a deposit and a month’s rent
in advance. And of course even if you don’t want the benefit but would
prefer to get a job, potential employers will want an address. Nowhere
to live, no benefit or job. No benefit or job, nowhere to live. The rent scheme
helps break this vicious circle by the simple expedient of lending
people the money for their first month’s rent and guaranteeing the
landlord’s deposit. The rent is advanced on the understanding that the
first month’s housing benefit will be paid directly to the scheme. As
for the deposit, rather than hand over cash to landlords who sometimes
see it as a useful source of extra income, the scheme offers a paper
bond – in other words the landlord agrees to a maximum figure for any
possible damages and the scheme guarantees to meet genuine claims up to
that amount, but with no cash up-front. The success of
the scheme depends upon the trust of landlords, so the role of Martin
Kelland, its administrator, is vital. He is the one who must persuade
landlords to forego the first benefit payment and to place their trust
in the paper bond rather than hard cash. Martin also has to double-guess
the local rent officer who decides just what housing benefit will be
paid for each property. If Martin agrees a rent of £200 a month and the
rent officer only rates the property at £180, the scheme loses £20. More
importantly, if a beneficiary damages the property, it is the scheme
that pays. Given the previously chaotic lives of many who come for help,
the attrition rate of only 27% of the scheme’s money in the last 12
months shows that Martin is not a bad judge of character. In any case,
minister Cliff Bembridge is clear that if the scheme is not losing some
of its deposits it must be playing too safe and not supporting the very
people it was designed to help. Even with the good reputation the scheme has built up, some landlords are reluctant to accept a paper bond – but enough do to make the scheme viable. Later this year a new state agency comes into being which will hold all deposits in trust, so landlords will not see the cash up-front. The change may make more landlords willing to accept the bond, knowing that there will be no cash alternative in future.
Making a difference
Neither the parents group nor the rent deposit scheme at the Avenue Centre are earth shattering in terms of the numbers they serve. The parents group will, average around 15 mums with 25 children. The deposit scheme helped 80 people in the last 12 months, with a further 35 receiving help with their first month’s rent. Both require a high degree of professionalism and commitment. There are many schemes which are easier to run and which could boast much larger numbers – and cost less to maintain. Against that is the fact that the Centre changes the lives of people who are, at the time when they come for help, among the most vulnerable in our society. They find a place where the last really are first and where counting the cost comes a poor second to making a difference.
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The 2005 Community Project Awards are
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