The relationship between bereavement and homelessness

Catherine and Karita both work with clients who are dealing with death; someone else’s, or their own. It’s often the first time in years clients have been asked what they want.

Karita Razzell

Everybody deserves a good death, everybody deserves to be treated with dignity at the end of their lives, to be able to die peacefully according to how they choose – just as you’d hope someone you loved would. My role is to help clients get the care that they need as they approach the end of their lives.

I remember as we started encouraging clients to start thinking about their future wishes, some said, “What’s the point? It’s never going to be listened to. Nobody is ever going to care what I want.”

People experiencing homelessness are not used to having their wishes respected. So the theme that runs through both our jobs is allowing our clients’ voices to be heard and listening to them.

One thing people don’t realise about homelessness is that it ages you. The average age of death for people experiencing homelessness is the early forties: as I get older as a stably housed person I’m likely to experience frailty, falls, incontinence or memory difficulties – fingers crossed I’ll be at least 80 before that sort of stuff comes my way.

But our clients experience those things a lot younger in life, perhaps in their forties, even without a life-limiting illness like cancer or kidney disease.

Clients often die from a complex health condition they don’t know they’ve got. A smear test is not high on your to-do list when you’re struggling with all the other things associated with homelessness.

My role is pretty rare. No other homelessness organisation has a role dedicated to helping people die well.

People either think my job is depressing or that I’m an angel. Neither is true!

But supporting people to experience a good death while being looked after, respected, with their friends and not on the streets, that’s what makes me feel good at the end of the day.

“My role is pretty rare. No other homelessness organisation has a role dedicated to helping people die well.”

Karita

Catherine Hedges

I think it’s important to acknowledge the link between homelessness and bereavement. I’m a trained counsellor and help clients process their grief. They’re often historical losses that they haven’t managed to come to terms with, which is often a contributing factor to them losing their home.

It might be that, for example, the parents have the house in their name, pass away, the son is living there and has no right to that property, so they’re made homeless that way.

Or it might be that they lose their home because of the emotional fallout of grief, where they’ve not had the funds or mental capacity at that moment to pay bills. I’m working with a woman who was in that situation. Slowly her water, gas and electric got turned off and eventually she was evicted. So loss and homelessness are closely intertwined. As far as I know, we’re the only homelessness charity that offers this service.

A lot of our clients who have grief use alcohol to block it out. Dates and anniversaries of deaths are often crucial to relapses, so having this kind of support is really helpful to people and their recovery. Often if someone they know has died because of drug or alcohol use they think, ‘I can’t believe it’s not me’, or ‘What if I’m next?’ There’s a lot of survival guilt.

One client sticks in my mind. He was in his sixties, and his 19-year-old son passed away. He couldn’t cope, didn’t pay the rent and got evicted. He slept rough for a couple of weeks on Clapham Common before he was found by St Mungo’s and supported.

In our sessions, he said “I haven’t grieved or processed it. I was taught you don’t talk about your feelings.” We talked about how he could process his grief and he was adamant that he wouldn’t. But two sessions before we were due to finish he said, “I’ve had a lightbulb moment: It will always be sad and that’s ok.”

Then he moved out and was suddenly really hopeful about life in a way he hadn’t been before. His emotions weren’t scary anymore.

I think it's important to acknowledge the link between homelessness and bereavement.”

Catherine

Our clients have rarely felt heard or listened to, and their opinions aren’t often considered. 85% of our clients have experienced severe childhood trauma, so having anyone listen to and take you seriously and allow you space to process it can be very powerful. They often say “This is the first time I feel like someone’s listened to me”.

The relationship between bereavement and homelessness

The relationship between bereavement and homelessness

Karita Razzell

Catherine Hedges

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“This is the first time I feel like someone has listened to me”

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Laser’s story

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