Roughing it to Support The King's Arms Project
8th March 2010
More than 40 volunteers slept out in Bedford
on the night of Friday 26th February to raise money for the
homeless.
The group, including John Morris, Head of
Housing Services and Mike Milner, Rough Sleepers Co-ordinator from
Bedford Borough Council, and Street Outreach Support Workers Becky
Ross and Sharon Pole, from the King’s Arms Project, braved the cold
in sleeping bags, cardboard boxes and plastic sheeting at Brickhill
Lower School playground to help raise more than £10,000 for the
Bedford based homelessness charity.
Cllr Colleen Atkins, Portfolio Holder
for Homelessness said: “I applaud everyone who slept rough on
this well organised sleep out. It was a challenge for them and
I'm pleased they did so well in terms of raising awareness on this
subject. Although numbers of those sleeping rough in Bedford has
dropped this year, we will continue to work tirelessly on ways to
reduce the number of people who end up sleeping rough,
and provide the necessary support to those who find themselves in
this tragic situation.”
In a typical year the King’s Arms Project
supports some 300 homeless people some of whom are entrenched rough
sleepers. One of the coldest winters in the past 30 years
makes life very uncomfortable if you do not have a roof over your
head or a bed to sleep in.
John Morris mentioned that he has learned a
tough lesson about life on the streets – albeit in the safe
environment of a school playground and then for only a single
night. While he was well kitted out with wet-weather gear
plus a hot water bottle, hand warmers and a sleeping bag, he still
got a little taste of what it was like to sleep rough.
John said: “Spending a night out on cold and
wet concrete playground when it's raining for hours on end with
temperatures close to freezing will be an experience that I will
not forget in a hurry. It brought us all down to one level and let
us realise how fortunate we all are compared to real rough sleepers
who don’t have a roof over their head for sometimes weeks or months
on end”.
For Mike Milner, it is the fifth year that he
has taken part in the Sleep Out and this year it was a family
affair as he was joined by his wife Jennifer.
Mike said: "Some people think that homeless
people should, 'get off your backside’, ‘go get a job', all that
type of stuff. It is not quite that simple as many have multiple
and complex needs. When I actually listen to rough sleepers and
hear the stories of why they are homeless, you just take a
different perspective. Mental illness, depression, relationship
breakdown, drug and alcohol problems, broken homes, abusive parents
or partners are all reasons people end up on the streets. We can
easily take for granted how privileged we all are, to live the way
we do. My job is about helping to get entrenched rough
sleepers off the streets and provide opportunities for them to
experience some kind of normality again in their lives.’’
John Morris added: "Coming from a nice,
warm comfy bed, in a cosy house with 12 inches of loft insulation,
cavity wall insulation with an electric blanket on standby for
those very cold nights, it did come as a bit of a shock when at
3am, I rolled off my mat into a puddle of rain water. I was hoping
to stay dry all night as I had the relative luxury of cardboard
boxes, a survival bag and plastic sheeting - how wrong I was! It
certainly was a sobering reminder of the genuine hardships that
real rough sleepers can suffer night after night’’.
Information: If you would like to sponsor Mike
or John, please send an email to: mikemilner@bedford.gov.uk
inserting the words 'sponsored sleep-out' in the subject
box and stating how much you would like to pledge. To donate
online go
to: www.kingsarms.org/sleepout2010 and click on
'support us'.