drug
We encounter homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction on a weekly basis.
This was mainly working with drug addicts and sometimes alcoholics, often young women trying to support their families by working on the streets of Leeds.
My career brought me into contact with social workers, police and drug councillors My past career has certainly given me a knowledge of how people struggle to manage in our modern society as well as seeing ways through which they can thrive and move away from their economic situation and the influence of their peer groups.
I am a trustee of Hope, a charity for the homeless, that re homes, and addresses the problems of drug taking and psychological harm that so many have around us.
To speak out on the most pressing issues of the day from climate catastrophe, war, famine, disease, human trafficking, domestic violence, homelessness, the epidemic of drug and alcohol dependency that blights so many lives, to a skewed form of market capitalism that, while benefitting some, disadvantaged many others and laid waste to once thriving industrial communities; to the terrifying consequences of power, wealth and influence being concentrated in the hands of a small clique of avaricious, egotistical, narcissistic monopolists in the technology industry, who ally themselves to equally egotistical politicians enabling them to further concentrate power in their own hands and institutions at the expense of the ordinary citizen, while at the same time commodifying what it means to be human by reducing each person to datasets to be leveraged for profit or traded in some grotesque form of digital slavery.
As a young adult I worked with Jackie Pullinger in Hong Kong, amongst Chinese drug addicts.
During this time, I also volunteered at a local drug and alcohol drop-in centre; while away on a training course I met a group of christians whose loving dedication to the broken and vulnerable revitalised my faith in Christ.