For one night every week, the spare room in Lesley Matthews’s Bradford home is available for a young homeless person.
When they arrive, Lesley offers them a meal, a shower and a change of clothes. She’s there to listen, but she understands if they don’t want to talk.
The next morning, the young person leaves, after Lesley has made a packed lunch.
For the young people who come to Lesley – a volunteer with Bradford Nightstop – she offers more than just food and shelter.
“Being a Nightstop volunteer isn’t just about going ‘there, there’. It’s about helping people move on,” she says.
“It’s important to be a listener. Some don’t give much away and I don’t probe, but for others it helps to talk. After their stay I give them bus fare to college, work, or an agency that will help them find long-term accommodation. The aim is to help them rebuild their lives.”
Manningham-based Bradford Nightstop provides accommodation for homeless people aged 16 to 25 in volunteers’ homes.
A recent Nightstop survey revealed that many of the young people referred to it, who often have fractured relationships with their families, value the support and wisdom of the over-60s making up a large percentage of volunteers. Lesley, 63, interviewed Nightstoppers and older volunteers in the Shipley, Nab Wood, Baildon and Wrose areas for their views on the charity’s inter-generational work. “I found that young people appreciated their hosts’ life experience,” she says. “They saw them like their grandparents. The relationship with their parents was fraught or broken down, but they spoke of people from their grandparents’ generation with affection and respect. “The older volunteers, meanwhile, got great satisfaction from helping with a heartbreaking social problem. They weren’t feeling useless – they felt valued.”
Following the survey, Bradford Nightstop has produced a booklet, funded by a Shipley Community Safety Panel grant, highlighting the contribution older people make, with a view to recruiting more as volunteers. The booklet is being distributed to libraries, community centres, churches, and to Shipley Youth Cafe.
“Too often the relationship between younger and older generations is stereotyped as hostile,” says Lesley. “In the booklet we see this isn’t always so, and that Bradford Nightstop provides the arena for a positive experience between generations.
“We hope it gives a new perspective on older and young people’s attitudes to each other – both are easily written off!”
Nightstop user Del, 22, says: “I didn’t mind that my hosts were pensioners. Older people encourage you, they try to put your mind at ease. That helps. When I heard the hosts talking about their children having grown up, it gave me confidence in them.”
Gordon, 18, says: “I’ve got a lot more respect for older people. It helps if a host has had kids that have grown up; they’ve had that experience of their child leaving home and it all going wrong. That happens, you know…you can mess up…”
Joan, 67, is a volunteer driver. “Young people in a group terrify me. But on a one-to-one, which is how I see them in Nightstop, they’re nice and sometimes vulnerable,” she says. “Some are quiet, withdrawn, others are quite chatty.”
Volunteer host Veronica, 62, has learned from young Nightstoppers about the pressures facing young people. “I had never heard the term ‘sofa surfing’ until I became a host,” she says.
“You can get complacent as you reach retirement age, but by hosting you don’t just see the problems, you’re helping to do something about them.”
Lesley says the booklet provides a “snapshot of what can happen when trust is carefully built between different generations.”
For more about Bradford Nightstop, ring (01274) 776888, e-mail administrator@bradfordnightstop.org.uk, or visit bradfordnightstop.co.uk.
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