YESTERDAY the government announced that £100 million would be spent to get rid of rough sleeping across the country by 2027. The practice has rocketed in the past three years and is mirrored in Bolton. NEIL BRANDWOOD spoke to an expert on the subject, Dave Bagley.

FOUR years ago there were three rough sleepers in Bolton. Last week there were 22.

“People weren’t born to a life of pain and torture and misery, but life happens.”

So says Dave Bagley who, with his wife, Chris, founded Bolton’s Christian-based charity Urban Outreach in 1990.

Worryingly, the majority of Bolton’s rough sleepers are young people.

Although Dave cannot pin the root cause of young people’s homelessness on one thing, experience has shown him that mental health issues rate highly.

“That could be because services for young people within mental health have been really challenged in the last few years so are we seeing more young people who weren’t able to provide for earlier on? Is this because we haven’t intervened in time?

“Back in the day, you didn’t have huge drug issues with the homeless. You only had drink. As bad as that was, you were only dealing with one problem. Now the drug problem is profound,” says Dave.

“And because they’re younger, and because of their troubled souls, there’s not one single reason that we can tackle. If you’re caught in that, how do you look at the world and say: ‘There’s an opportunity for me to take?’.”

“When you stop taking whatever substance you take, everything is bad.

“You have to think about what puts them there and why their lives are troubled. Their dreams have crashed and burned and it’s probably not their fault and now the choices they make appear to put them in a bad place, but how do you give them back their dream? It’s a huge challenge.”

In the course of trying to help vulnerable youngsters, Urban Outreach came into contact with the wider homeless population of Bolton.

“In those days they were a lot older,” says Dave. “There was a lot of drinkers, we didn’t see much drugs on the street. We wanted to find out off them if there was anything we could do to help.

“They highlighted that they wanted somewhere they could have something to eat and somewhere to sleep. And from that we, in partnership with the council (everything we do is with partners), opened Winter Watch.”

Winter Watch began 22 years ago. It was originally an emergency night shelter at the weekends during the winter period.

“It was about filling the gap when there was nothing else there,” says Dave.

“The council gave us empty buildings which we reconditioned. We had a lot of volunteers who even came along to training on New Year’s Eve.”

Gradually, it grew and the national homelessness charity, Crisis, was so impressed that it gave them a £5,000 grant which was used by Urban Outreach to pay the bills and provide fresh, nutritious food for those who desperately needed it.

When Labour came to power, Urban Outreach received funding which allowed it to employ someone to work with rough sleepers.

Once again, this led to another offshoot called Street Life, which involved doing outreach work with rough sleepers throughout the year.

“It’s a support service for rough sleepers which aims help them get off the street. The first port of call is to get them a roof, then it’s about getting their benefits sorted out, making sure they can pay the rent, are settled and getting them help if they have problems with drink or drugs.

“We also have a drop-in session every week where they can get a brew and talk through whatever’s on their mind.”

Urban Outreach also has a very large project for runaway children, funded through the lottery.

“Rough sleeping can often be traced back to young people running away from home, so now because we work with every single child, we’re going further upstream,” says Dave.

Although from Essex originally, Dave is massively proud of what his adopted town is already doing.

“Young people are massively well serviced in Bolton. If you’re a young person, you’ll get service. And that’s really critical with people who are rough sleeping.

“Bolton is a very generous town. Nowhere does it like Bolton. I think people in Bolton sense an affinity, a sense that “there but for the grace of God…’

“We’re in a borough with £140 million of cuts and yet we have such poverty. We could bemoan it, we could have a council that says: ‘We’re not going to support vulnerable people’. But we have a council that year upon year puts money into services for vulnerable young people that are not a statutory obligation.

“There are more than 1,500 voluntary groups in Bolton – that’s 120,000 volunteer hours a year. Its stunning!

“We should shout loud about Bolton, about the kindness and the generosity and the love that we share. We need to big our town up more. If you feel good, you do good.”

For further information about Urban Outreach go to the website: www.urbanoutreach.co.uk