I used to run a charity called 'Crisis Centre Ministries'; it is
now 'inHope (Bristol)'. We worked to help people suffering from
problems such as homelessness and addiction. The issues these
people faced were deeply affected by policies being implemented by
the statutory services, based on considerations which were both
financial and political.
We did not want to become a political campaigning group, but we
did need to engage with political issues. Asking important questions
was one of the ways in which we sought to retain our focus but still
assist the political debate - and this was easier when the questions
were not on the charity website. Hence this page, retained for
historic interest now...
Introduction
Our aim is to build relationships
with the people who comes to us, with the intention of being able
to help them move forward and discover a better life.
Inevitably, quite a bit of our work involves helping people
get access to the help which is provided (or which is supposed to
be provided) by the state. And we find that various bits of the
system do not work the way we understand they should, or the way
they should work sometimes seems wrong.
We do not want to pretend we have all the answers. But we
certainly have a number of questions. And by asking these questions,
and by using them to build a dialogue with the people who can
influence, change or help to shape the system, maybe we can play
some part in helping build a system which works more effectively to
help the people it is supposed to be helping.
The Issues
The key areas where we have concerns and questions can be
summarised as follows.