Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

My first actual shift at Bishopbridge House took place on Wednesday, the third of February.   In order to complete my safety induction (the first task), I took a tour of the building with Leo, Bishopbridge’s main handyman.  He led me through and showed me fire exits, boilers, various switches, how to work the locks, and other technical tidbits.  I noticed a few sharps bins, and was told that although the hostel does not encourage drug use in the slightest, it’s silly to assume that residents of a place specializing in drug and alcohol addiction are completely clean.  Instead of naively assuming that it doesn’t happen, they have the facilities to make disposal of materials as safe as possible.  Leo also showed me the kitchen, where I met Val (one of the hostel’s chefs) who cooks for the residents of the Direct Access side of the hostel three times per week.  We discussed the difficulties of getting residents to eat healthily and gain a sense of nutrition, since they’re often used to eating anything they can find on the streets.  The hostel is very accommodating to the various tastes of its inhabitants, and Val seemed happy to oblige to nutritional requirements, allergies, or religious food practices.

Later, a senior staff member showed me the actual bedrooms residents live in, as well as their common areas.  I was rather shocked to find out that they didn’t look all that different from rooms in a regular hostel.  Of course, they were a bit more sparsely furnished and the motives leading people there are entirely different, but they looked as comfortable as the circumstances would allow. Residents are allowed the liberty to decorate their rooms as they desire, but safety checks are done twice a day to make sure living areas are clean and safe.  The common areas are filled with couches and board games, as well as a coffee table, tv, and Wii.  Sets of rooms are divided into “clusters”, with one kitchen per cluster shared by four people.  Kitchens are also checked for sanitation; at the moment, the clusters are in a competition for the cleanest kitchen where the winning cluster may have a take-out dinner of their choice.  (A side note: many of these kitchens were cleaner than mine at UEA. Sad.)

Throughout the tours, I was completely amazed by how much Leo and Mark knew, not only in practical terms for fixing things, but about the entire process of the shelter in general.  During this shift, I became aware of how multidisciplinary working at Bishopbridge must be: the staff must have good interpersonal skills (working with the actual people who rotate in and out), organizational skills (to keep records of who is there, what they need, why they’re there, and so on), medicinal skills (in terms of drug usage, what it does, how it’s used, how to treat an overdose), and many others.

In the afternoon, I sat in on a hall meeting where residents are given the opportunity to discuss how their living situation is going, any concerns they might have, or problems that arise with other members of Bishopbridge.  This was perhaps the most jarring aspect of my first shift.  To be honest, I had a definitively stereotyped image of a homeless person in my head: I imagined them to be dirty, unkempt, unintelligent, and to have some distinguishable air about them to make their homelessness obvious.  In actuality, many of the men I saw in this meeting were clean, well-dressed, and very “normal” looking. If I were to see them walking down the street, I would NEVER guess that they were homeless.  One particularly well-groomed man (who, again, could have been a professor of mine from the way he looked) was talking about another hostel he had stayed at and how, in his time there, he saw someone get his throat slit.  I was completely taken aback by how much these men had seen, and how I would have had no idea upon first glance.

Another man was upset about Bishopbridge’s policy regarding visiting the rooms of other residents (it’s forbidden for safety reasons).  This man keeps his dog with him, and the man said that the dog was more of a family member to him than any person in his life.  Since dogs aren’t allowed in the common rooms of the hostel, he felt obligated to stay in his room and refused to leave her alone.  As a result, he felt that he was being shut out from communicating with other residents because they couldn’t visit him in the only room where his dog was permitted.  He argued that he wouldn’t be able to assimilate back into the community at large if he wasn’t given the opportunity to communicate.  The two staff members leading the meeting were very intent in listening to him, and I was very impressed with how much control they had both over themselves and over the meeting.

This shift, overall, was a huge eye-opener for me.  I came into the internship having little or no idea how a homeless shelter was run and what homeless people are really like, and even in these few hours I feel like I’ve gained a lot of insight both in Norwich and as a worldwide problem.

Hours logged: 4

Total hours: 5