AIBU to think its not acceptable for a homeless woman to have to give birth on the street.

[Thelnebriati]

Homeless woman gives birth to premature twins on a cold street outside Cambridge University college
www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/cambridge-news/homeless-woman-birth-premature-twins-17471458

Just seen your reply - if you let me know where you are I can point you in the right direction via pm if you are in need.

I am doubting you a wee bit to be honest phleba

More accurately, I’m not doubting you, just that in schools a lot of hand wringing and exaggeration takes place. If my own school was to be believed, half of the cohort spent Christmas Day prowling the cold lonely streets. A lot of the time, it’s wilfully exaggerated.

Alsohuman There aren’t enough homeless shelters but with 80%male & 20 % female( roughly) as homeless there is going to be a need for more Male beds than female.

The fact is there isn’t enough spaces, looking at countries that have reduced homelessness and how they have achieved success would be better

Depends where you are. I am genuinely worried about some of my cohort this xmas and i've been teaching over 20 years. My own school doesn't "hand wring" it just quietly has the services and uptake. I've seen a big swing towards working poverty over the last 5 years. Cambridgeshire is weird - i've worked in many schools over the last 11 years here but truly rural ones are really suffering. Not least because they tend to be small. Anyway, i'm risking derailing here sowill step aside.

*Mentally healthy, NT, pregnant, homeless women do not, ever refuse a warm, safe bed for the night.

The help needs to kick in well before these women become sick enough to end up on the streets refusing what little help there is left to them and it needs to be adequate enough to prevent them becoming homeless.*

In my experience, it is because these beds are often not safe. When I was pregnant, and had fled my abusive partner, I was housed in a homeless hostel.

From what I have heard, pre-2010, most pregnant women got put in self-contained temporary accommodation, and any others got put in hostels which housed only women/ children.

When I was in there (2015), it housed everybody. Pregnant women, children, drug addicts, just released prisoners. Shared bathrooms.

I knew people who had been raped there. I lasted six days before going back to my abusive ex partner. Three days of weeing in saucepans at night and having my door attempted to be kicked through each night. To be robbed, I think - not attacked, but who knows.

I had a fairly good childhood, and no experience of living on the streets. But I can completely understand why for some women, they feel safer on the streets in a community they are familiar with, than a place like that.

I live in a major city, and have heard several horrifying tales of women who have been attacked in homeless hostels like the above. And you have to live there for 1-2 years (with your kids) before getting moved to a flat.

I was lucky, saved up and got given some money so I could leave my ex P again and rent a private rented flat, went to uni etc. But not everybody has these opportunities.

Please do not think that the accommodation they offer you when you are homeless is always safe, and these women are on the streets because of some mental deficiency or naivety or stupidity. I think if you believe that, then you are the naive ones, tbh.

I totally get that know

I live in a small abbey town near Cambridge and the homeless population has exploded in the last 5 years. To make it even worse, there are new housing developments constantly being built everywhere, but only if you can afford it of course. I saw "Where are our houses?" graffitti'd on the sidings in giant capital letters. Something's got to give.

Cambridge is reported as being the city with the greatest inequality in uk
Rough sleepers alongside streets full of million pound houses

I think the key words are 'premature' labour. Who knows what issues this woman had - drink, drugs - the babies arrived sooner than expected so nothing was in place.
I work in cambridge.. far too many homeless but a lot of these individuals do not want help.. there are organisations in the area but far too many people will give money which exacerbates the problem if there are dependency issues.
Believe me.. a labour government will not help and cambridge has a labour local government in power.. the issue is not improving...

I started with my current employer in 2003. There were no rough sleepers near our offices. Now they are in double figures within a 200 yard radius. This has happened in the last 3 - 4 years. A few years ago we had 4 or 5 branches nationally that had problems each year. Now it's that many a month. Sure it's nothing to do with government policy.🤔

yellow please don't patronise me. I have involvement with social care due to my son's disabilities. I can assure you that social workers are leaving because of the added pressure of the workload. Not only that but they aren't being replaced.

This means that other vulnerable people who aren't as lucky as my son are slipping through the net........they're being deemed as capable when they often aren't. So they're vulnerable to homelessness because bills aren't always managed. They often can't understand forms or where to ask for help. They're vulnerable to exploitation by people who will drink with them or introduce them to.drugs. They'll take their money from them and quite often they'll try to buy friends as they're lonely.

10 / 15 years ago the support was there so these people would have carers. Or at least be in the system. That support has gone. And it isn't being improved.

I managed to get support recently for a woman who clearly had significant learning difficulties. I know her only because every day she walks 3 miles into town. And gets a cup of tea in a local coffee shop. She does this because the staff talk to her. It's her only social interaction all day. A 6 mile round trip to speak to someone for 2 minutes. We often chat, I'd noticed she was often scrabbling to pay and the staff would give her a.free drink. A few times I bought her one and said to keep the change. More and more I noticed she was looking disheveled and extremely smelly. I did a bit of digging and managed to get her address out of her saying my DS wanted.to post her a card. So went by her flat with a bag of goodies and a card. No exaggeration I could smell the flat from the outside. It turned out she had.no gas or electricity, her benefits had been stopped because she hadn't filled some forms in (( because she bloody can't )) she had no food in the place so God knows how she'd been eating. And this woman had been supported by SS 15 years previously when she'd been housed in her HA home. She'd had carers at that time. And had managed for years.

But then her carers got stopped. She was assessed as being capable. And then her mum who used to look out for her died.......sadly austerity doesn't cure mental health problems, learning difficulties, brain damage etc. These people are still here. They just aren't being.looked after.

The increase in homelessness and the failings in social care rests solely on the shoulders of this government. The lot of them have blood and a hell of a lot of misery on their hands.

Isn’t Cambridge Labour controlled though, and has been for years? They have control of where money is spent, so I would assume something like this wouldn’t happen on their watch, being the caring party they are?

Cambridge is indeed labour.

And funding to every local authority in the country has been cut to the bone in the last nine years. They can’t spend money they haven’t got.

There have always been and always will be rough sleepers as the reasons for homelessness are always straightforward, uncomplicated economics but I can't remember there ever being so many people sleeping on the streets in plain view, during the daytime. I suspect that for some, an empty shop doorway on a busy street is the only situation where they feel safe to go to sleep.

Back to the original article, I'm glad that passers by made sure this lady and her babies got the medical help they needed. I hope they're OK after their early entry to the world on a cold morning.

Aren't always

Actually livelove our labour MP had a people before potholes thing going locally.........but with resources being cut back so much there's little power to be had.

And compared to some areas of the UK we haven't been affected as much but that's mainly due to a strong, SN community.of parents and carers. The problem is when those links start to crumble the whole lot collapses. Which is why there should be a reliable back up.of state support. And that just isn't there.

And people fall out of the system, like the lady in the pp. Those people don't get back into the system without someone to advocate for them, regardless of the flavour of local authority or MP.

All their funding has been slashed to the core. Social care is the first to go. Then there's PIP and UC and all those assessments. One poster's mother has schizophrenia. She had managed for years living in supported accommodation, then the budget for this was cut. No more carers, bedsit flat on her own (the OP could not take her as she had not the space, also had children of her own and the lady was a safeguarding issue because she brought violent and dangerous people back when she was not medicated and also stole and used street drugs), also found 'fit for work' so dumped on UC. Was evicted and living on the street. But hey, one less person on the books.

FuzzyWuzzyface

I think the key words are 'premature' labour. Who knows what issues this woman had - drink, drugs - the babies arrived sooner than expected so nothing was in place.

That's okay, I can tell you what issues she had that cause premature labour. Twins. That's what she had.

I can't believe your post, frankly.

Firstly, twin pregnancies are automatically higher risk for premature labour, and classified as high risk pregnancies. You cannot just handwave it as her fault they came early, and it is hugely insulting to her and every other mother of multiples to do so.

Secondly, being exposed to extreme temperatures, such as through being homeless in a northern hemisphere winter, probably affects the likelyhood of pre-term labour. It's not exactly bedrest, is it.

So true! I got the scary we want money or proof email after I first accessed antenatal care. And what is required to show you're entitled to nhs care involves proof of residency, a name on a utility bill or a tenancy agreement. Pregnant homeless women cant provide that.
I went through this came back to the UK pregnant after living and working abroad. It was tricky enough as Im subletting. If I'd been homeless I don't know what I would've done.
It's not about citizenship. Im British. Its about ordinary residence.

Did she recognise she was pg & needed to be off the streets?

I wonder what will happen to the money being raised for them.

And often support is literally someone popping in once a month or whatever, checking paperwork is up to date. Self care is being done, place is clean etc. Maybe nag them to attend a couple of courses or groups. Really basic stuff that stops problems spiralling. long term it's probably the cheaper option.

And.its gone. The ones who are getting that sort of help will be the ones who years ago were deemed capable of needing residential care 🤔

It’s complicated even more in places like Cambridge because social services and housing are the responsibility of two different councils.

From The Guardian - 2004

^The number of homeless families in Britain is set to hit 100,000 for the first time, more than double the figure when Labour came to power.

The huge rise, the result of successive increases over the past seven years, highlights the severe housing crisis that is gripping the UK and last week prompted the Government to announce a radical new plan to tackle the burgeoning problem.

According to the homeless charity Shelter, the number of families in temporary accommodation, the standard definition of homelessness, will hit 100,000 before the end of the year. The figure compares with 41,250 families who were registered homeless in March 1997, shortly before Labour took office.^

Link: www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/18/homelessness.uknews