failure

Micki was with me again last night. Some-one trod on her in the night, she thinks accidently. I dreamed I was very carefully and deliberately run over by a car. We are very low down when we are on the pavement. We may be open to some of the risks which homeless people face but we are not homeless or pretending to be homeless. We are there in solidarity with homeless people and to highlight the many issues surrounding homelessness.

Homeless people are often seen as failures in some way. People talk about 'failed asylum seekers'. School produces a huge sense of failure for many children. Some parents tell their children they are useless. People are not failures. The institutions fail people. 'Refused asylum seeker' is a more accurate description and puts the emphasis on the system and not the person. Primary schools try very hard to make education enjoyable and inclusive but the early exam systems produce huge pressures for everybody and work against that. It is good that SATS are being reduced.

There is this given assumption that competition is healthy and necessary. In fact co-operation is much more productive. A co-operative game is much more fun for everyone. On a global scale we need to co-operate with each other to create a just and peaceful world and to properly address climate change. Co-operation involves communication and understanding each other's needs.

Homeless people are not failures. Some people have a whole string of problems - redundancy, relationship breakdown, financial crisis. For some of those the safety net of benefits is not there.
Some have no recourse to public funds at all, some get in a muddle with the benefits system. If the person who experiences those multiple problems has had positive messages from home and school about them being a valuable resourceful person s/he will manage that well. People who come here from other countries - whether as economic or forced migrants - tend to be courageous resourceful people. But some refugees are badly traumatised by war and loss and some British homeless people have had a lot of negative experiences.

We need to change the systems which create failures and which limit people's natural resourcefulness.