Although the primary school to which I was consigned from age eight to eleven provided a quality of education that ranged from adequate down to dismal, the standard of football played was considerably better, even half decent. Nothing was more competitive than the annual matches between the school ‘houses’ named after the planets, Mercury Jupiter, Neptune and Saturn. In my last year I captained the Mercury team to, embellished through my sepia-tinted memories, a stunning 4-3 victory over Jupiter in a tense final. Key to our victory was the performance of a hard tackling right-back, William Bentley. In my mind’s eye, there we all are with our arms around each others’ shoulders, bouncing up and down in jubilation and William Bentley is on the far left, part of the group but just slightly detached and he is looking across to seek affirmation from the rest. But I think that my memory is selective, separating him from us because of what I now know. At school William Bentley was undo...
From 1999-2018 I was CEO of homelessness charity Thames Reach. From 2018-20 I worked at MHCLG to deliver rough sleeping and homelessness programmes. This blog seeks to bring to life the complexities, dilemmas, set-backs and triumphs that are part of trying to help people escape homelessness. It aims to tell the stories of the inspirational people I have met in my work, many of whom have faced homelessness and from whom I have learnt a lot.