{"id":2176,"date":"2010-01-22T09:27:31","date_gmt":"2010-01-22T13:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=2176"},"modified":"2010-01-25T15:59:25","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T19:59:25","slug":"bishopbridge-internship-entry-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/01\/bishopbridge-internship-entry-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Bishopbridge Internship, Entry 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

About the Organization<\/span><\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, my first meeting regarding my internship with St. Martin\u2019s Housing Trust<\/a> was a success.\u00a0 Supposedly located at 35 Bishopgate (near the Adam and Eve Pub<\/a>, the primary schools, and the hospital), I took the 25 bus into the city center and decided to walk the rest of the way.\u00a0 In fact, the website of the organization misled me to its office complex, located a few blocks away from where I was meant to be.\u00a0 Thus, after being directed elsewhere, I made my way to Bishopbridge House at 45 William Kett Close on Gas Hill. (The Bishopbridge Housing leaflet may be found here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Anna Hassan, my contact for this assignment, greeted me and showed me to her office to tell me a bit about the association and discuss my plans for working with her staff.\u00a0 In the progression from sleeping on the streets to having permanent housing, Bishopbridge House is the opening landmark.\u00a0 That is to say, Bishopbridge is the first accommodation of many in the arduous process of escaping homelessness.\u00a0 It specializes in providing aid for people with drug problems, alcohol problems, or mental illness.\u00a0 Because of this (and because Bishopbridge precedes any other accommodations a person might receive), this particular group has a responsibility to link patrons with organizations dealing with addiction or other disabilities to make them more \u201cmarketable\u201d to other groups. \u00a0\u00a0By introducing clients to sobriety, independence, and a sense of responsibility, these people become more likely to receive other types of aid just by beginning their journey at Bishopbridge.<\/p>\n

The first step involves actually finding these people and letting them know that accommodations such as Bishopbridge exist.\u00a0 The organization has a routine series of stops to check for \u201crough sleepers,\u201d and the town council also alerts them to potential people in need of help and shelter.\u00a0 Each morning and evening, a team embarks into Norwich to extend a hand to the homeless they find along the way (which, according to Anna\u2019s recounts, didn\u2019t often seem to be a particularly high number-perhaps three or four people in a session, some of which may decline access to the shelter).\u00a0 The winter months provide a particular challenge, though.\u00a0 Legislation dictates that if the weather drops below zero degrees Celsius for three nights in a row, the shelter is required to house all those desirous of lodging regardless of available space.\u00a0 If this occurs, Bishopbridge becomes overcrowded and understaffed, but it does keep the homeless safe from the elements for a short period of time.<\/p>\n

To expand, issues of space do affect Bishopbridge regularly.\u00a0 The shelter has a very high turnover rate, meaning that the staff accepts clients, assesses their individual needs, provides an appropriate starting point to receive help, and moves them to the next step in accommodations as soon as possible.\u00a0 This allows the shelter to serve as many people as possible simply by getting them off the streets as quickly as possible.\u00a0 A free bed is a total rarity at Bishopbridge, thus proving that all space is usable and lodging is in high demand.\u00a0 While the teams that actually trek the streets (the CAPS) encourage Bishopbridge to take more and more clients, the staff is forced to counter this due to space, time, and resource constraints.\u00a0 This constant push and pull between the CAPS and the staff is one problem that Bishopbridge faces.<\/p>\n

Staying in the house costs twenty five pounds per week (in my future research, I hope to learn where clients are expected to find this money).\u00a0 This charge helps cover costs of food, electricity, water, and basic maintenance of the organization itself.\u00a0 Regarding food, there are two halves of the building.\u00a0 In one, a chef cooks all meals for the clients who often speak of \u201cmoving up to the other side.\u201d\u00a0 Once promoted, so to speak, they receive a bit more responsibility: the shelter returns twenty pounds of the fee for food shopping.\u00a0 On their first excursion, a patron and a member of staff go together to learn how to make nutritious, affordable meal choices.\u00a0 When their dependability is proven, clients may food shop on their own.\u00a0 However, they must continue to present the receipts to make sure that appropriate selections are being made each time.<\/p>\n

At Bishopbridge, people may keep their pets.\u00a0 Dog training classes are available, as well as recreational lessons like computer classes (where usage of Facebook is taught to reunite clients with their families and friends) and flower pot painting.<\/p>\n

My Internship<\/span><\/p>\n

I will be exploring each of the aforementioned facets of Bishopbridge\u2019s mission over the course of a month. \u00a0For one morning session and one night session, I will go out with CAPS to the streets of Norwich and inform the homeless of Bishopbridge, as well as encourage them to use its resources.\u00a0 \u00a0I will also be taught how the homeless are designated to various organizations, as well as the process of moving through the system.\u00a0 One Monday, I will sit in on the distribution of stipends and possibly shadow a member of staff during food shopping.\u00a0 I hope to watch a recreational class in session, and generally see how the shelter is run while simultaneously learning about homelessness in Norwich as a general issue.<\/p>\n

Hours Logged: 1<\/p>\n

Total Hours: 1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About the Organization On Wednesday morning, my first meeting regarding my internship with St. Martin\u2019s Housing Trust was a success.\u00a0 Supposedly located at 35 Bishopgate (near the Adam and Eve Pub, the primary schools, and the hospital), I took the 25 bus into the city center and decided to walk the rest of the way.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[731],"tags":[2001,2004,2002,1999,1470,2003,2000,2021],"class_list":["post-2176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amy","tag-bishopbridge","tag-feeding-the-hungry","tag-homelessness","tag-internship","tag-poverty","tag-rough-sleeping","tag-st-martin-housing-trust","tag-volunteering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}