What does home mean to you?
26 August 2024
“Growing up in a stable environment, in a home where there’s peace, where you can foster relationships with family members. It’s that sense of belonging. It has given me a sense of who I am. To me that’s really peaceful. I find it now quite empowering.”
Ann.
Comfort. Peace. Sanctuary. Safety.
This is what home means to some of the participants in 20 Faces of South East Simon.
Comfort
“I feel comfortable here in this home”, Antoinette says. “I wouldn’t have felt that way before.”
Antoinette has experienced homelessness.
She describes home as “somewhere you’re safe, where you can relax and feel more comfortable in your own skin.”
Antoinette was determined to make it her own place. She did her own decorating. “I do like the way it works with all my little bits of artwork and things like that.”
And she’s able to have company: “My little dog, Sandy” who “makes me feel a lot more relaxed and not feeling so alone because life can be lonely.” As Antoinette puts it, Sandy’s “the comfort in the house.”
Antoinette has finally found her place to call home, her comfort.
Peace
For Ann, everything associated with home can be “quite empowering.” She says, “growing up in a stable environment, in a home where’s there’s peace”, has given her a real sense of place. “It’s that sense of belonging”, she says. “It has given me a sense of who I am.”
Ann leads the South East Simon services team and says much of their work with people is “trying to support them to be able to find their peace in whatever way we can.” While finding a place people can afford to call home is “a huge starting point”, she says “it’s the tip of the iceberg…they struggle to find peace because of the trauma they’ve been through in their lives.”
Ann believes the South East Simon team “shows genuine warmth and compassion for the people they’re working with” so they have a “chance to be in a much better place in their lives.”
A real chance to find their peace.
Sanctuary
And where you find peace, you find sanctuary. “Without the sanctuary of home”, Esme believes, “you’d feel totally vulnerable, anxious, left down; feeling that nobody has your back. Feeling unloved.”
Esme often hears first-hand the impact on people when their sanctuary is under threat. “I get calls here from people in situations where the landlord is upping the rent, they can’t afford it, they have to move. Many of them have probably been let down in life and haven’t been shown respect.”
It’s why Esme believes it’s important to “show them that respect. It’s a starting point for people to feel more confidence and feel they’re loved and trusted.”
A starting point to finding their sanctuary.
Safety
“We’re their last resort”, Thelma says. “They’re at their wit’s end by the time they come to us.”
As a support worker helping people to hold on to their tenancies, Thelma sees the “huge impact on people’s mental health.” She says, “it declines more and more. People begin to feel like there’s no way out.”
It’s when that fundamental feeling of safety in your own home begins to break down.
“When you go home you just need to feel safe, secure, protected”, says Thelma. “Feeling unsafe in your home; being anxious, nervous, afraid – you just wouldn’t be happy.”
Antoinette is putting many of those feelings behind her. “It’s just great that the Simons look after everyone, that people have somewhere to call home”, she says.
Antoinette spends some of her time now as a mental health advocate. “It means the world to me, helping people and getting the word out there. It helps break the stigma. Humanity don’t accept people with mental health. There’s still judgement, unfortunately.”
A community of people challenging attitudes and helping men and women find their safety.
Community
South East Simon is a big community of people who care. Men and women throughout the South East are working with Antoinette, Ann, Esme and Thelma – and many more, helping people who have lost everything to find their comfort, their peace, their sanctuary, their safety.
Thank you for being part of South East Simon over the last twenty years.
Thank you for believing in people.
Antoinette, Ann, Esme and Thelma are among 20 people representing the thousands of men and women who, over the last 20 years, have made South East Simon the community it is today.
Twenty Faces for twenty years of South East Simon Community. Their words, their stories, our experience.