So, last time I think I spoke about how I had a drug addiction for 30 odd years. I’d been in prison come out of prison, ended up homeless, ended up in a night shelter, in supported accommodation, got my own property in October 2014 and was volunteering at the Booth Centre and also involved with the Manchester homelessness partnership, which is how I got involved in street poem to start with and was ready for getting a job. I was maintained on my script and coming down slowly and doing really well and ready to move back onto getting my life back together properly.

So, career wise I carried on volunteering at the Booth and then there was a new hostel opening in Manchester and they needed interim staff, someone to work nights, at the weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday nights.

I’d also through the Manchester homeless partnership; It was just after Andy Burnham had been voted in as Mayor. I’d been doing a couple of bits of things with him and they decided they wanted a grow trainee in the mayor’s office. They wanted somebody so they could set the homelessness team with coproduction running through it, and the best way to go about it was to have a grow trainee in there.

So, worked at the hostel for about 3 or 4 months and my last shift there was the day I had my last dose of Subutex and then I had a week off because I needed a week to get use to not being on anything and the week after that I started working at the mayor’s office.

So, my official title was coproduction and policy officer for the greater Manchester mayor’s office which sounds dead fancy but it wasn’t. It was just basically, going round and kinda doing the same thing I’m doing now but with statutory services, councils and stuff and like that, making sure that if there was stuff going on that they were getting people with lived experience (I hate that term as well) involved with what they were doing. I worked there for a 12-month contract but it got extended for 3 months and I finished there in February this year.

So, 2019 and I now work for Street Support Network as Greater Manchester network administrator / coordinator. What I’m doing is some of the same stuff but it’s a bit different. I suppose my job role is to go round the 9 other boroughs to see what’s going on in homelessness, have they got a network have they not got a network, what’s working, if they’ve got a network who’s in it, who isn’t in it, who should be there, have they got people who have personal insight into homelessness in it, if not, why not and where are they?

I suppose one of the reasons I got the job is because of my lived experience although I didn’t put that on my CV, its not something I put on my CV but the mayor’s job was because I’d got that lived experience. I don’t go into meetings going I’m here as someone with lived experience because I’ve moved on from that, I don’t introduce myself as that anymore because people in the room don’t need to know.

But for me it’s a good thing cause I bring a different perspective than they do, because you see when your going in talking to people from councils and stuff who think they know what’s best for people and they’re saying well this is what’s best and they don’t know you’ve got that experience, but I always see it from the other side, I don’t see it coming from an LA side I see it coming from people that are sleeping on the street’s side and what they need, and also from a female perspective, things that aren’t working.

It was a language thing for me, that really annoyed me when you’re sat in meetings and people are talking local authority language, yeah its English its just a different language if you’re not used to it and all their acronyms and stuff like that and your like what does that mean? Cause you know half the people in the room don’t know what it means but they want to ask so I will always ask that question that people term a stupid question. I’m not scared to ask that stupid question.

Privately now I am, where am I? I’m still in my flat in Cheetham Hill, the same one. My son’s back home with me which is a bit of the pain in arse because I’m only in a one bedroomed flat and its not big enough, we want to move, shit’s piling up around me cause it’s 2 person’s stuff in a one bedroomed flat.

I am drug free, yeahh! I’ve been off me script since October… what year we in? October 2017 an its massive because there was a point when I could never get past 2 weeks. I’ve come off my script a couple of times, I’ve been off it, on it, off it, on it and an I just couldn’t get past that 2 weeks, so getting to the 30 day mark was massive for me. Getting to the 2 week mark was big enough but getting to 30 days I was like YESSS and then to 6 months and then a year. I picked up my 6 month key-ring in Liverpool.

So, I think to get stories out there is really important and I just think to show the journey that people have gone on, why they’re there and the difference in how some people have ended up homeless. It’s not one route into it. So, I think its really important that there’s different people’s stories and there’s stories of people at different points of their lives.

I am also now a trustee at the Booth Centre where I used to volunteer, so YESSS!