Mason Milne takes part in schemes that boost his social skills and confidence (pic: Dimensions)
Making eye contact is difficult for Mason Milne, who has autism, and making friends is even harder. Yet the 11-year-old has met both challenges while at a special needs holiday club near his home in Colchester, Essex, over the last year.
“He’s come out of himself,” says his mother, Mandy. “He’s made a friend at his club and we’ve noticed how he will come up and speak a little more.” Mandy, 47, and husband, Gordon, 48, meanwhile, get some respite from caring, reassured that Mason is enjoying activities like swimming or roller skating.
Read more about how the Buddies programme for youngsters with learning disabilities and autism goes beyond providing respite care on the Guardian website.
Joe Hayman, author, British Voices“Even though we’re not involved in gangs,” the young man from Hackney tells me, “the way people look at you just puts you down. No matter what you do, you’ll always have that bad name of a black kid from Hackney, so some people think, ‘if people are going to see me like that anyway, I might as well be bad.’”
Last summer’s riots, which began a year ago today, hardened my resolve to write an uncompromising book, British Voices, about our country from the perspective of its people. The comment above comes from a teenager I met in east London last August, not long after the end of the unrest.
The riots felt like an expression of something we had swept under the carpet. It seemed to me that failing to address the way that people in the country were feeling – including the sense that ordinary people’s voices often went unheard – would simply leave those feelings to fester once again. I wanted to approach the widest range of people possible and no matter they said, would present their opinions faithfully.
I started my research three weeks after the end of the riots. One of the first places I visited was Hackney, the scene of some of the worst trouble, and a lot of discussion focused on stereotypes of young people and a lack of opportunities.
“There’s a lot of talent in Hackney,” one young man suggested, “but there are no opportunities to uplift yourself. We’re left stranded; we have to fend for ourselves; so, if you see people with the nice car, you say, ‘I want some of that’. Our generation, we like fancy stuff but we can’t afford it – the riots were an opportunity to get things you know you couldn’t otherwise get.”
Was it worth the risk of a criminal record? “If there are no opportunities anyway,” he replied, “you might as well risk it.”
There was also anger towards the police. “They racially discriminate,” another young man said. “They search the black kids and leave the whites. They smashed my brother’s head against a windscreen, pushed me up against a wall, all for no reason. That’s why people rioted – they enjoyed having power over the police. They were saying, ‘If we wanted to take over, we could.’”
“It was great how youths were united by the riots,” one young woman said. “Gangs you wouldn’t expect to mix going up against the police together. It was great to see such spirit.” She went on: “It was wrong to burn people’s houses and family businesses, but the big shops all had insurance so what does it matter? I don’t see how it’s different from MPs and their expenses.”
I asked her whether the expenses scandal justified violence and looting. “No,” she said, “but it sets a bad example.”
It was an argument I heard again and again; indeed a sense of disillusionment, and alienation ran throughout the entire three months I spent travelling around England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. I went as far south as Lizard Point in Cornwall and as far north as the Shetland Isles, talking to over a thousand ordinary people along the way. They were disillusioned with different things and expressed their feelings in different ways, but the feeling remained.
As I travelled, the anger in the wake of the riots seemed to fade. It was replaced by a sadness, a sense that for all the social, economic and technological steps forward the country had made, a lot had been lost along the way: a sense of community, trust and responsibility to one another.
The riots may prove to be a one-off, a few days of violence consigned to history; and even if there is trouble again, the police will be better prepared to respond. But none of the underlying issues have changed since the unrest began a year ago. Indeed, since then the economy has deteriorated and national institutions – the media, the police, the banks and politics – have all continued to take a battering. Surveyed around the Queen’s Jubilee, 75% of respondents to a Yougov poll said that community spirit had got worse in Britain, chiming with my own findings.
I came home determined to use the lessons I learnt to found a new charitable trust, The Community Trust, aiming to address this issue. My confidence comes from the most powerful lesson from my journey: that, in spite of all the changes in our society and the challenges we face, the kindness and decency of the British people lives on.
I also picked up some valuable lessons on the types of initiative that the new trust might support to harness that kindness and decency and to build a stronger society.
First, projects bringing together people from different backgrounds, building social bonds, fostering trust and breaking down barriers between communities. Second, initiatives enabling people to help each other to navigate their way in an increasingly complex, difficult world, building the skills, networks and personal attributes needed to get through and to thrive.
Small but important initiatives such as these – and the willingness of ordinary people to support them – could foster a greater sense of community and citizenship in Britain. That might not solve our problems, but might help us to face them together, rather than turning in on ourselves.
As the 17-year-old unpaid carer of a mother with mental health issues, Holly is often asked – by her peers as well as by professionals – about the particular challenges of having a caring responsibility: “When I have tried to explain my situation, the questions have been, ‘Are you homeless? Are you on drugs? Are you being abused? Well things aren’t too bad then’.”
The reaction she often gets shows the low profile and lack of awareness about the particular challenges facing young adult carers. There are thought to be around 230,000 self-declared young adult carers between the ages of 16-25 in the UK but the figure could be much higher because stigma means many do not talk about their caring responsibilities.
The report that Holly contributed to comes from NIACE (the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) and highlights the impact of caring on learning. Today’s publication focuses on young adult carers, young people aged 16–25.
Holly was 10 when she realised “my family did not function or behave the same as my friends’ families did”. Her mother rarely left the house, her brother often got into trouble with the police and her parents’ marriage eventually broke up. Referred to her local young carers service by a social worker, she lived part-time between her parents, moving eight times in almost as many years.
As the NIACE report shows, caring leaves young people with little space for school or college, let alone a social life or thinking about their adults futures. As well as having their education disrupted, it is hard for young adult carers to fit apprenticeships or work around caring.
As Holly explains in the report: “The house moves and disruption caused me to change college education halfway through and move to another college. Whilst at a continuous secondary school I was able to find support and the staff were genuine and made good links to my parents, always making sure I had opportunities. Staff even went out of their way to give me a lift home after any outside school activities, especially in the dark winter months. I achieved to my ability and started college where I built up good relationships with tutors. However, on my move to the college 70 miles away I had to restart the course, and although I tried to tell staff about my issues, I was left isolated and have fallen behind in my studies.”
Historically, provision has mainly focused on carers under-18, or adult carers and while NIACE says this is changing, there is still an awareness gap when it comes to knowledge about young adult carers. The situation is not helped because young people like Holly can find it hard to ask for help which, as today’s report suggests, adds to their difficulties with problems such as isolation, frustration, low aspirations and anxiety and behavioural problems. As well as the impact on the individual, there is an obvious knock-on effect on communities and the economy.
Recently, Holly’s mother has suddenly moved again, back to the area the family originally lived in and the teenager has, once more, started the process of changing college.
* More information on NIACE’s work on young adult carers, including resources to support learning providers in their work with young adult carers, is here.
Zach and his father Kevin, who took part in research about fathers of disabled children published today, Dad & Me.Imagine feeling under pressure to keep your child a secret from your employer. Imagine, at the other extreme, being abandoned by your friends for focusing too much on the needs of that child. What about if you felt you didn’t fully understand your son or daughter’s abilities, or felt so isolated and condemned to a life of hopelessness that you worry the stress is affecting your health or relationship?
This is the reality facing many fathers of disabled children, according to new research published today among 500 dads carried out by disability charity Scope and online community Netbuddy.
As one father told researchers during the survey carried out in April: “My friends have abandoned me because they don’t understand why I have to care for my child so much. And I know she won’t ever get better….My career, once promising to put me at number one in the world at my specialist area, is now going nowhere as permanent exhaustion means that talking intelligibly is a major achievement. But I love and care for my child. It isn’t her fault.”
The research, Dad & Me, aims to raise awareness about the role of male carers; while an estimated 5% of the population are carer dads, so far there has been little research into their experiences.
Today’s findings suggest that:
• 15% of dads keep their child a secret from their employers
• 40% do not fully understand their child’s disability (“Medical appointments are usually in the day and I cannot always get time off work to attend…this leaves me with less first-hand knowledge of what my daughter’s autism means and makes me feel inadequate.”)
• 72% say caring for a disabled son or daughter has affected their relationship with the partner with stress and tiredness among the causes
• 61% think mums are treated differently from dads
Deborah Gundle, Netbuddy founder and mum to Zach who has Angelman syndrome (pictured with his dad above), says: “We wanted to highlight the important role that dad carers have, but to realise the extent of the problems dads are facing has been overwhelming. Even I had not considered the extent of dads’ involvement – both emotionally and practically – and it is commonly the case that mothers are assumed to take all the responsibilities of caring on board.”
Dads feel marginalised as carers as the common view is that women cope better in the home, are listened to more and given more support and sympathy while the role of the father is to support the family financially.
As Richard Hawkes, chief executive of Scope, explains: “This survey shows that everyone involved in supporting families’ needs look long and hard at what can be done to support dads to play a part in caring for their children.” Hawkes argues that if the government is truly to create the family-friendly society it wants, it needs to do more to promote flexible working to support family relationships and finances. Scope also has a support group for fathers, which it hopes to expand.
The fathers in the survey suggest improvements which could help support them in their role as dad carers such as appointments outside working hours, specific help and advice sessions for dads and more employer awareness. Like all parents and siblings of disabled children, they also argue that better social integration – more opportunities for children to integrate with others in their age group in “everyday” social situations – would help.
While in theory parents of disabled children have a right to ask their employers for convenient hours and employers must seriously consider this as an option, there is a gap with reality, according to dads who took part in today’s survey.
James’ story
James is a father to eight-year-old twins Thomas and Alice, who both have dystonic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, and to baby India. A PR consultant, he leaves the house at 6am and returns at 8pm, when his carer role kicks in. “Holding down a demanding job and being a carer can be a stretch at times,” he says. “I’m lucky enough to have a very understanding team of colleagues, but I do worry for dads who get held back in their careers because their employers feel they already have enough on their plate. People are sometimes denied opportunities to move up the ladder.”
James says most people assume that because he works, his wife does all the caring. The dual demands of work and the additional needs of his children means there is precious little time is left James and his wife to be together as a couple. “We have very little time to be together on our own and the pressures of caring for our twins and sleeplessness do take their toll. However, it has had a positive effect too – in building a strong bond through the difficult times we face.”
James would like to see more support for dads in terms of out of working day appointments and extra support services. “All support is during the working day so it’s not accessible for working dads. Asking for support as a father can be seen to be a weakness and a sign that we are not coping. There isn’t enough support or help available to us – and this is essential so that we can provide the best possible care when looking after our loved ones.”
Tom Spicer is wearing a huge pair of headphones and an expression of mild anxiety.
Backstage at the Honda Centre, Anaheim, California, at one of the world’s biggest rock gigs, Tom is about to find out whether he will fulfill his 15-year-dream to meet his idol, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich.
Tom is now 40, and this scene took place two years ago. But this was not just a tick on a “things to do before 40” list – it was an unprecedented achievement. Tom has fragile X syndrome, the most common cause of inherited learning disability.
It’s an uphill struggle for those with so-called invisible difficulties (people with conditions on the autistic spectrum, for example,) to achieve mainstream representation or indeed capture the attention of broadcasters, newspaper editors, politicians and the public.
So imagine the challenge for those with more visible differences.
If you see facial disfigurement in movies, its usually a handy hint just in case you have trouble figuring out the baddie (think Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddie Kreuger and just about every Bond villain). Trying to see if I could disprove this theory, I randomly remembered Liam Neeson in Darkman – scarred, with a grudge, ultimately fighting for justice – but then looked up the tagline” “hideously scarred and mentally unstable scientist seeks revenge against the crooks who made him like that”. Ouch.
Movie memo to kids (they might not know Freddie Kreuger but you can be sure they know Batman’s The Joker or Harry Potter’s Voldemort): look bad on the outside, and you’re bad inside.
Today, Changing Faces, the charity for people and families whose lives are affected by appearance-altering conditions, marks or scars, launches a nationwide film campaign. Please watch it, it’s powerful, elegantly produced and only a minute long.
You might already have spotted the charity’s poster campaign not so long ago which aimed to stop people in their tracks long enough to make them think (instead of simply staring). Today’s Face Equality on Film campaign, it is hoped, will go some way towards tackling the prejudice and crass assumptions experienced by people with facial disfigurement.
The campaign calls for balanced portrayals of people with disfigurements on screen and the film, which will be shown in 750 Odeon cinemas, invites audiences to challenge their assumptions about Leo Gormley, a man with burn scars. It also stars Downton Abbey actor Michelle Dockery.
As a teenager in the ’80s, my first foray into the mind-boggling world of skincare and “beauty” products involved a desperate desire to cover barely perceptible blemishes, inspired by the seemingly zit-free stars on my Smash Hits front cover. But since, then the concept of “beauty” has become even more extreme, and digital wizardry can clear imperfections in the blink of a heavily-made-up eye.
I’m conscious that my seven-year-old daughter, for example, is growing up in a media environment dominated by images of identikit, airbrushed, photoshopped lovelies projecting an unobtainable and flawless version of “looking good”.
In a world where older women are elbowed off the television news because their faces, rather than their news judgement, start to sag, what hope for those whose features even further removed from what is deemed be aesthetically pleasing? Changing Faces has already worked with Channel Five news to shatter such stereotypes.
But if women, ethnic minorities and people with disabilities are under-represented in television, then people whose differences are more obvious are, ironically, even more invisible.
And if facial differences feature on television, they do so in a medical capacity, in documentaries that present abnormality as something to be gawped at or “put right”. While the concept behind The Undateables might have been well-intentioned, it was the title of the show that put me off.
As Changing Faces’ chief executive James Partridge said in response to that Channel 4 series: “TV series with derisory titles makes life just that bit more difficult – it’s so unnecessary and it’s unfair. Very good factual and sensitive documentaries on disfigurement-related topics are frequently spoiled by offensive titles such as ‘Freak show family’, ‘The man with tree trunks for legs’ and ‘Bodyshock’. They are contrived to attract audiences but actually label the human being in the film in a sensationalist and voyeuristic way, treating him or her as an object rather than a person.”
At the risk of getting sidetracked down this road, I remember gritting my teeth a few years ago to get past the utterly ludicrous title of The Strangest Village in Britain. It was, was in fact a sensitive portrayal of life at Camphill’s Botton village which featured much of the good support that has made a difference to my family’s life – not that you’d know that from the objectionable title.
Back to today’s campaign launch; a YouGov survey of 1,741 adults commissioned by the charity last month found that bad teeth, scars, burns and other conditions affecting the face are viewed as the most common indicators of an evil film character. According to the poll, ethnic minorities, bald and disabled people are all thought to be portrayed in more diverse ways than those with disfigurements.
Responding to the poll, 66% said people with bad teeth mainly play evil characters and 48% said that people with conditions altering their appearance mainly play evil characters. Meanwhile, 30% said that bald people mainly play evil such roles compared to 13% who felt those from ethnic minorities mainly portrayed bad characters. Interestingly, 6% said that people with physical disabilities (in a wheelchair or have missing limbs) mainly play evil characters.
Partridge adds of today’s campaign: “It would seem as if all the film industry has to do to depict evil and villainy is apply a scar or a prosthetic eye socket or remove a limb and every movie goer knows that it’s time to be suspicious, scared or repulsed…Freddie Krueger, Scarface and Two-Face are just some of the names that our clients get called at school, on the street and at work. They have to put up with people laughing at them, recoiling, running away or staring in disbelief that they can and do live a normal life.”
* You can sign the charity’s online petition demanding an end to the stigma reinforced on screen.
Louis Tickle, freelance journalistAs a journalist writing on social affairs I often wonder if my articles make any difference or whether this kind of journalism is essentially exploitative. The dilemma isn’t original. Journalists and photographers struggle with it all the time. Mostly I ignore it. But it niggles.
So, I’m commissioned by a children’s charity to interview a single mum it’s been working with. She’s got five kids; black mould spreads thickly across her kitchen ceiling and down the back wall. One of her daughters, a little girl with asthma, sleeps in a pink bedroom so icily cold I feel my skin shrink when we look in. A single photograph of a baby lost to cot death is unobtrusively placed among the many pictures of her other children displayed in the front room.
There’s a housing association building site at the end of the terraced row, but this woman can’t get hold of the £400 she needs to secure one of the warm, dry family houses that will soon be available.
I write my piece feeling angry and hopeless. My fee is more than the money she needs for that deposit. I wrestle with the thought that I should give it to her. I don’t.
A year on, I still wonder if I should have done. This is hardly war reporting, but these are people living on a front line. They’re who I write about. And then I disappear off, my notebook full, my deadline pressing. I rarely see them again.
Does this kind of journalism change anything? I don’t know. It’s what I do, what I can do, what I have time to do. I know it’s not enough.
Though what’s playing out in the Leveson enquiry means that rotten practices are being dragged through the mire, the level of underlying suspicion about journalism saddens me, because it’s based on a misunderstanding of what any kind of serious journalism is about.
I don’t do this job because I want to stiff as many people as possible in the name of selling papers. I do it because stuff goes badly wrong in certain bits of public life, and in the small way that writing articles allows, I want to ask why – then persuade, cajole, flatter or embarrass people into giving me the answer.
The judgements I make in writing a piece may be taken fast, but they aren’t taken lightly. For instance…
I’m constantly examining the ethics of how I go about writing a piece. Particularly if an interviewee is vulnerable or not media savvy, I know that I can’t get across their tone of voice, or give every bit of background about their situation, so which quote I pick really matters.
I’ve written a fair bit about young single mothers. Asked why they got pregnant, why they chose to keep the baby, how they manage. And sometimes you’ll get a teenager replying along the lines of: ‘Some girls do get pregnant to get a council house, yeah, absolutely.’
What do I do with that? I know those words will make a strong headline. But if I use them rather than the less instantly “good value” comments, I don’t do this young mother’s entire situation justice. So I will think very, very hard about how to treat that kind of quote, and whether to include it at all.
Occasionally, I do stuff I know an editor wouldn’t like. National news organisations do not give interviewees the chance to see or approve copy before publication. There are practical reasons for this – deadlines, for example – but mostly, it’s about retaining editorial independence. Otherwise people ring up and say, “actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t write about such-and-such a thing I told you about, it’ll make life really awkward.”
That, I’m afraid, is tough. If you don’t want me to write something, then don’t tell me, or alternatively, negotiate when you want to go off the record carefully and in advance.
But when a charity puts me in touch with someone struggling to rebuild their life, and they talk frankly about the hell they’ve been through, I’m aware a clumsily phrased comment about their situation could knock their confidence at best and make life even more difficult for them at worst. So sometimes I will read back quotes to an interviewee to make sure I have accurately reflected their views and they’re happy to go public with them.
On one occasion, I spent an afternoon with a young recovering drug addict who had spent four years on the game to fund her and her former boyfriend’s habit. She’d had her eldest daughter taken from her by social services: now pregnant again and with a new partner, she was on track to being allowed to keep her baby.
Given what she told me about the horrors of her previous lifestyle and job, I don’t know how she’d found the strength to kick her habit, but I was damned sure that nothing I wrote was going to set her back. The finished piece was written entirely in the first person; the risk of misrepresenting someone when you do this is real, no matter how good your intentions.
So I sent her the finished piece to look at. In this specific situation, editorial independence wasn’t going to trump her right to have her life described accurately and in a way that wasn’t going to put her recovery at risk.
Unlike many ‘important’ people who cavil at tiny bits of phrasing, this woman didn’t ask for a single change. And when my editor told me to go back and ask her a question – how much did she charge for each particular “service”? – (something I regard as the low point of my journalistic career) she didn’t get offended or slam the phone down. She told me. And, as I was finishing the call, she said thank you.
I loved doing that piece of work. The access and insight journalists get is central to why I am still entranced by this job.
But returning to my original question, does this kind of journalism change anything?
Well, that piece was published in The Times. A lot of people would have read it. The charity that supported her would have got some publicity.
What they really needed though was money to support more girls as they tried to get off the game. Maybe the piece helped them twist a few funders’ arms. Whatever it did, it’s nothing in comparison to the work done by dedicated experts at the coalface of disadvantage, poverty, suffering and violence.
When I try to answer the ‘does it make a difference’ question, I feel a bit like when you donate to charity online. Do you pick £2, £10, £25 or a bigger sum that means you won’t be able to buy that dress you had your eye on? Whatever you put is something, but it’s probably not as much as you could have given, and it’s certainly never enough.
Whose pants do you pop on? Whose name’s in your knickers? Who’s behind your briefs? Who styled your smalls? And just where is this intro going?
Enough already. While retail guru Mary Portas last night kicked off her pledge to reignite the UK clothing industry with a range of 100% British knickers, one campaigning social entrepreneur in the south of England has slowly, steadily and rather stylishly been making ethical underwear since 2009.
Becky John in the Who Made Your Pants factory, Southampton
Who Made Your Pants is based in Southampton and run by Becky John. Each pair of pants is sent out with a tag which allows you to find out who made them. There’s something of an interactive knicker-namechecker where you punch in the date on the tag and check who made your pants.
The organisation’s quirky name belies its strong, pro-woman campaigning zeal and while it’s less bra-burning and more pants-producing, the ethos is simply “amazing pants, and amazing women”.
The business is a women’s co-operative which employs seven women, mostly refugees. From the fabric that goes to make the underwear (recycled from end of season lingerie stock sold by big companies that would otherwise go to waste) to the working conditions in the small factory, the company is ethically-run.
The women are from Afghanistan, Somalia, the Sudan and potential workers come via refugee support agencies (although the firm now has a waiting list for employees). There is training and support as well as a computer suite for the women to use email and the internet, so the factory is something of a social and community space as well as a workplace.
While ethical clothing ranges are nothing new (and neither, for that matter, are undies with a social conscience), the Southampton women’s co-op commands attention as a small but perfectly formed community-based drive to make a difference.
Had to share these images from a forthcoming exhibition created with people who have learning disabilities.
The show, The Girl With The Heart Shaped Hands, opens on Tuesday March 20th and has been organised by learning disability charity Outreach 3Way. The aim is to improve the mainstream representation of the 1m or so people in the UK with learning disabilities and reflect the personalities of each participant.
The eponymous girl of the show’s title is 38-year-old Samantha Wheeler who lives in Crawley and uses Outreach 3Way’s day centre.
Samantha Wheeler , whose pose lends itself to the title of the art exhibition
The images were taken by photographer Maria-Aurelia Riese who says she hopes the pieces “act as a gentle way of building understanding”: “There is a natural human reaction to feel awkward around those who look and behave differently from what we are used to. Once you really see someone for who they are that melts away. I very much hope this exhibition has that effect.”
Tom Ogle, also featured in the new art show
Participants in the exhibition submitted mini-profiles of themselves, to show the person behind the photo. Tom, 43, above, for example, enjoys “sports, drama, swimming, bicycle riding, listening to my music, walking into town and eating out” and is proud of his drama work. His dream for the future is to do more drama and “get married to my girlfriend.”
Portait of Matthew Dawson
The girl with the heart-shaped hands runs from 20th March to 1st April at Chichester’s Oxmarket Centre Of Arts. You can find out more about the free exhibition here or on the website for learning disability charity Dimensions, which Outreach 3 Way is part of.
Think homelessness and film and you can’t fail but think of Cathy Come Home. While the social action that followed Ken Loach’s cinematic call to arms was a one-off, the film project The Truth About Stanley could be a modern take on that artistic tradition; a visually striking and thought-provoking piece of social realism that seeks to raise not only awareness about homelessness, but funding.
Just today the government’s new homelessness figures showed 48,510 households were classed as homeless in 2011, a 14% rise on 2010. The situation has led one charity chief executive, Leslie Morphy, of Crisis, to demand action from the government amid the “perfect storm” – a combination of economic downturn, joblessness, soaring demand for affordable housing, housing benefit reform and cuts to homelessness services.
This is the dire social and economic backdrop to the forthcoming film shot by award-winning director Lucy Tcherniak. The Truth About Stanley tells the story of two rough sleepers who make unlikely friends; Stanley, an elderly Congelese man, and Sam, 10.
Still from The Truth About StanleyStanley (Oliver Litondo) in The Truth About Stanley
The non-linear narrative is intriguing, opening as it does with the death of Stanley and developing into questions about Stanley’s past and the reasons for Sam being on the streets.
Sam (Raif Clarke), The Truth About StanleySam, The Truth About Stanley
The lines between reality and fiction are blurred as the pair’s friendship develops and Stanley regales his young runaway companion with stories from his past. Or, as the website neatly puts it: “No home, no belongings, plenty of baggage. A short film about a man, his stories and the boy who listened.”
The project, a twist on more traditional donation campaigns, aims to raise money for two homelessness organisations, social enterprise The Big Issue Foundation and charity Anchor House.
The film offers a much-needed focus on the twin issues of older and younger rough sleepers. Entrenched rough sleeping is common among older rough sleepers but accurate figures on the issue and that of homelessness among older people are hard to come by, partly because of the hidden homelessness and the lack of age breakdown in head counts.
According to Homeless Link, however, the 2010 total of street counts in authorities with a known or suspected rough sleeping problem was 440 and generally around 18% are over 50-years-old.
As for children sleeping rough, again the figures lack accuracy, but according to the charity Railway Children, at least 100,000 children runaway in the UK every year and many are not reported as missing by their parents or carers. According to youth homelessness charity Centrepoint, 80,000 young people experience homeless in the UK each year.
The 20-minute film is being produced in association with Oscar-winning Trademark Films and features songs by Radiohead and Mumford and Sons. Stanley is played by renowened Kenyan actor Oliver Litondo, the lead from the international feature film The First Grader and Sam by 12-year-old Raif Clarke. This Guardian piece from last year tells you a bit more.
The trailer and shots here (photographs by Ben Millar Cole) have been released ahead of the premiere on April 2 at the Rich Mix cinema in Shoreditch. The film will be and released online on April 4th.
*To donate text STANLEY2, 3 or 6 to 70300 to give £2, £3 OR £6 to The Truth About Stanley fund or visit the project’s Just Giving page.
100% of the donation will go to homeless charities Anchor House and The Big Issue Foundation. Follow the film on Twitter.
