THE large polythene basin is full to the brim with prescribed drugs. Unopened bottles of pills for heart and pancreas jostle with half full containers for general aches and pains.
The total cost of the medication is over £500. "This was found in one homeless man's locker when he died last year," says Alice Leahy, "and it doesn't include all the cough bottles which I threw away. The irony is that if he went looking for vitamins which he needed, he couldn't have got them on his medical card."
Alice Leahy is founder and director of Trust, a health service for homeless people. The organisation has recently launched a new afternoon befriending service partly to counter such a prescriptive approach which would dole out more pills to vulnerable people - without monitoring, without discussion and without any follow up.
Now each Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, Paddy Gallagher opens Trust's side gate in Bride Road, Dublin. The word is slowly getting around and people are beginning to drop in. Small is beautiful here, and they don't want big numbers: "We define health very broadly to include emotional and physical wellbeing," says Alice. "The social side is very important as well. We hope to give people, an opportunity to talk, to discuss all kinds of things from last Sunday's match to how to get their rights."
Trust, which celebrated its 20th birthday last year, is situated in the basement of the Iveagh Hostel. Open each weekday morning, the service is for people living in hostels or sleeping rough.
It's a place where they can come with their problems. If it's a medical problem, Alice may refer you to a caring GP, or make a hospital appointment. "People think that because there are services, people can avail of them," says Alice, "that is not always the case. Many homeless people have great difficulty assessing the health services, either because they have no medical card, or they are frightened of hospitals, or don't know a GP, or because when they go, things aren't explained to them."
The befriending session we visited was attended by homeless people for whom hostels have become a way of life.
At the core of the sessions is the socialisation. On Tuesdays, Trust has the service of a health board optician and chiropodist. Homeless people who walk a lot can suffer greatly if their feet are in poor shape, and a chiropody treatment plus a properly fitting, pair of shoes can make all the difference. "On Thursdays we hope to have different people in," says Alice. "We might have someone from the Irish Council of Civil Liberties talking about rights. Homeless people don't always know their rights and can be vulnerable to invasions of privacy by official bodies. Christy Moore is a great friend of ours and some afternoon we'll have music and song. Some homeless people have great stories, and we might have some of that as well. We'll see how it goes."
Because much of Trust's work can't be costed, there is a danger that it could be discounted: "You can't put a price on what we do, but we believe much of it is preventive medicine," says Alice. "We're helping to keep people out of hospital, adding to the quality of their lives and saving the State money. Talking something out can be much better than taking pills for depression though, of course, I accept there is a place for suitable medication. properly monitored. What's success? What's rehabilitation? There are all kinds of definitions of success. I suppose one definition would be when we persuaded one man not to be picking up butts off the street, but to go and buy his own cigarettes like everyone else."