Alice Leahy has been conferred with an honorary doctorate for her work with the homeless, but she still feels an outsider, writes Éibhir Mulqueen
Alice Leahy was recently conferred with an honorary doctorate from UCD for her work with homeless people. Earlier this year, she was named "Tipperary Person of the Year" by a committee in her home county.
Despite such recognition, she describes herself as an outsider in her profession of providing care to the homeless. As an example, she cites the recent launch of the homeless action plan by the Homeless Agency, which is a State agency. "We did not have an invitation to it," she says matter-of-factly.
She is not surprised. She has a name for questioning the homelessness "industry" for its obsession with statistics, performance indicators and clear-cut targets and for its lack of vision.
"People are afraid to speak out. Very often they are afraid to speak out because you won't get promotion, you won't be asked to sit on a committee, you'll be seen as a trouble-maker, and you'll be seen as difficult. It's very much about shooting the messenger, rather than listening to the message."
The Homeless Agency's plan, entitled "Making it home", describes the setting up of the Dublin LINK database on homeless people which, when completed, "will provide an overview of the people who are homeless at any one point in time, as well as charting their flow through the system".
The action plan has set a target of eliminating long term homelessness and the need for people to sleep rough by 2010. According to the agency, about 100 people now sleep rough in Dublin.
But there is no "quick fix", Ms Leahy says. "Homelessness is a bit of a misnomer really. There is a big difference between not having a home and not having a house. Having a house does not always mean having a home."
For her, the official solutions are material ones for a problem that has an emotional and spiritual dimension too. They say nothing about human contact. She cites the case of a phone call "the other day" from someone using a house phone, saying "I'm very isolated".
"We would get a lot of calls like that. I think we [as a society] have become very cold and impersonal and the services in the area of homelessness are becoming so streamlined, too, that we are forgetting about that. People will become homeless for that reason even.
"Anything that is going on must be focused more on human beings and we are all human beings, and we are all complex, and we all have good and bad about us, but you cannot look at the problems of healthcare by just looking at statistics."
She also uses the same term "outsider" to describe the people she meets every day at the Trust Centre. For her, it conveys the humanity in the people she deals with every day, a humanity which can be stripped away by the term "homeless" and by the dry, jargon-laden language of reports on homelessness.
Located on Dublin's Bride Road, the Trust Centre shares the same building as the Iveagh Hostel. Both premises are on the other side of the street from another world, that of the private health club of the Iveagh Bath Leisure Centre.
The washroom, showers and bath in the Trust Centre provide a similar function for its clients. The centre is a refuge for homeless people, a community where they can have a cup of tea or coffee, chat, eat the fruit donated week in, week out by a north side businessman and refresh themselves. It's also a place where, if they choose, they can decline tea, avoid chat, refuse to answer questions, but have sores and cuts treated and foot problems treated by a chiropodist.
"Our function is much more accepting people. First, meet people as they come in, find out what their problem is, don't rush in to collecting information because we all know everybody has a right to keep things private, and for homeless people it should be no different."
A nurse by profession, Alice Leahy takes a holistic view of health. Wellbeing is central to it. If people have a roof over their heads but are lonely, they are not healthy. In her office are photographs of some of the people who have used the service, the portraits conveying a sense of the life experiences of their subjects.
"If you are sitting with people who are homeless, you feel their pain, you literally feel the pain of some of the people you are working with. You see it in their faces. And there is nothing wrong with feeling it. But we are all meant to be so controlled."
Homeless people have a right to access to company, she believes. It leads some of them to prison, where, despite the deprivations, they find a community.
"We have several people who we know must be in prison now because they haven't been in this week. They get in there, they have a bed. They feel they're part of something when they are in prison. It's very sad but that is the reality."
Trust quotes the World Health Organisation's definition from its constitution that "Health is a state of complete well-being and not merely the absence of disease and disability, and is a fundamental human right".
She describes the charity, which she co-founded in 1975, as non-denominational and non-political, although "I think you are political if you are helping someone to say, 'I am important'".
It is this message which is being ignored, she believes, as well as the nearly 30 years of experience she and others have.
"People who are developing services must realise they do not have all the answers and the services will never work and the money will be wasted if they are not prepared to listen to people on the ground."
In recent years, she has seen increased wealth lead to increased bureaucratisation. "When Trust was set up the health service was much smaller and the people running the health service were very much in touch with the people working on the ground, and you did get the sense that everyone was in it together trying to make a difference.
"There was a time when I could send someone to a hostel to get in. You cannot do that anymore. You have to fill in forms and you have to collect information. I understand in one case, a PPS number was being asked for."
She believes the education system should be focusing on human values, "in isolation from homelessness" to tackle a wider malaise in society.
"Our civics courses should all be about looking at the human being."