Steph's story

"I’m the Service Manager at Eacha, Each Recovery Matters.

It’s a recovery sign-posting service. We have an open door policy. Anybody can come in.

People come to our door, we get them in, if need be we can get them fed, showered, clothed, we’ve got a hair salon which offers haircuts free of charge. We give out phones, sim cards, support with benefits and debt. We work in partnership with housing, Department of Work and Pensions, justice, we’ve got nurses that come in.

People have a right to dignity and that’s what we try to do. 90% of our staff have lived experience, they’re in recovery or they’ve got family experience, they understand. People’s rights to being treated well, and access to food and support it matters. It matters to me.

I’m 20 years in recovery and 18 years working in this field. I see so much injustice, people being turned away.

We had an 82 year old woman, she got scammed out of all her money on the internet and her family threw her out. So, she’s on the street with her dog and a bag, no mobile phone. She sat here all day, we were feeding her coffee, chatting to her. That’s the kind of work we do.

People who find themselves homeless come here, at times they have to wait and can get the phone call from housing at 4 o’clock saying there’s nowhere for them to go, they need to sleep rough.

So we run about trying to get a food parcel, a sleeping bag. We’re telling them where to go and sleep rough. It’s horrendous that we’ve got to do that. We say, go to the police station or sleep in a church, or the back of the sports centre because there’s heaters; hot air blows out the back.

When you come here you get a warm welcome; a cup of coffee and a biscuit. Whereas at the other services, you’ve got a big glass screen or a desk, and it’s “what do you want?” attitude and it can be a “no, no no”.  that’s what our guys are used to and sadly, they accept that.

Attitudes have changed slightly, but only in individuals. Structurally and centrally, there’s still a lot of policies and procedures that hold so much up and it’s unfair to people.

The government make recommendations, guidelines, and the services just say, “we can’t afford to do that”, or “we can’t do that”. Where’s the follow up? They’re never held to account, because they look at the Charter of Rights and go, “ach well, they’re just guidelines”. There’s not really any teeth to them.

NHS, housing and councils won’t work across borders, you can’t get something if you don’t have the right postcode. We do our best to cross those borders and try and support people.

You’ve got villages dotted around who don’t get the support they should. There’s a big disparity between the town and the rural areas, which needs to be addressed.

It shouldn’t matter where you are.

We support people to go to appointments, because they’re treated better when we’re there. We tell people, “you’ve got the right to have a house, you’ve got the right to be supported”. They tell us, “I don’t want to go, because I get treated like s**t”.

Then workers phone up and it’s all different. That’s not right. There’s institutional discrimination going on. People are treated badly because the staff are burnt out ,they’ve had enough or systems don’t allow them to help in a way they should.

I do talks for nursing students. I talk about myself as a child, where I used to sit on the bridge in Ayr waiting on my dad, because I met him there once. Every Saturday for two years I would sit on that bridge waiting. And he never turned up.

It’s about trying to get people to understand when that person is standing in front of you demanding prescriptions, showing poor behaviour – that’s that wee guy sitting waiting on his dad all those years. That’s the trauma that results in this behaviour. This is a human being we’re talking about."

This is an excerpt from the SHRC's report on economic, social and cultural rights in the South of Scotland. ESC rights touch on every part of our daily lives and often have an impact on one another. The stories in this report demonstrate how human rights issues can affect people's lives.