May 31, 2024 • 47 mins
The Rural Homelessness Podcast, hosted by Matt McChlery, aims to raise awareness about rural homelessness in the UK. In the first episode, Matt interviews Keith Smith, the director of The Ferry Project, a homelessness charity based in Wisbech. Keith explains that the podcast was started to challenge the misconception that homelessness is only an urban problem and to highlight the prevalence of rural homelessness. The Ferry Project provides accommodation and support to homeless individuals, with a focus on creating a family-like environment. Over the past 25 years, they have supported over 3,500 people and have become the primary homeless provider for Fenland District Council. They also offer preventative services, employment support, and operate a community centre. The podcast will continue to explore various themes related to rural homelessness.
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Takeaways
- Rural homelessness is a significant issue in the UK, and The Ferry Project aims to raise awareness about it through their podcast.
- The Ferry Project provides accommodation and support to homeless individuals, with a focus on creating a family-like environment.
- They have supported over 3,500 people in the past 25 years and have become the primary homeless provider for Fenland District Council.
- In addition to housing, The Ferry Project offers preventative services, employment support, and operates a community centre.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Rural Homelessness Podcast
02:55 Challenging the Misconception: Rural Homelessness
25:39 Supporting Over 3,500 People: The Impact of The Ferry Project
37:00 Beyond Housing: Preventative Services and Employment Support
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
This is the Rural Homelessness Podcast,where we discuss the important issues
around rural homelessness, hear from thoseaffected by it, and offer some solutions.
Brought to you by the award -winninghomelessness charity, The Ferry Project.
Welcome to the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
(00:28):
Well, hello there.
Welcome aboard the Rural HomelessnessPodcast.
I'm your host, Matt McChlery Thank you somuch for joining us today.
We want to elevate and raise theconversation around rural homelessness in
the UK.
And to do that today, I am joined on ourvery first episode by the director of The
(00:49):
Ferry Project, Mr.
Keith Smith.
And The Ferry Project is celebrating its25th...
anniversary this year and this podcasthelps to celebrate all of what's happened
over that time.
And so let's begin by introducing you toKeith Smith, the director of The Ferry
(01:13):
Project, and find out a little bit moreabout how the charity first began.
So Keith Smith, welcome to the podcast.
Hello Matt, thank you.
And it's great to have you with us today.
Now, could you just explain the reason whythe Ferry Project has started this podcast
(01:38):
series?
The Ferry Project is a homelessnesscharity and we're based in a town called
Wisbech is situated in NorthCambridgeshire.
It's right on the border of Lincolnshire,Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.
And a third of the town is in Norfolk, twothirds of towns in Cambridgeshire.
and four miles up the road isLincolnshire.
(01:58):
So we're riding that niche at the top.
So, Wisbech itself is a very rural area.
It's a reasonable sized market town ofabout 30 ,000 people, but surrounding it
are just miles and miles of farmland.
And historically, Wisbech has always beenone of the agricultural areas of Great
Britain.
(02:19):
And our experience is that we startedHomeless Charity because there were lots
of homeless people in the area.
And now,
25 years on, it's our 25th anniversarythis year, we're finding that we're
supporting 300 people a year who arehomeless or in danger of becoming
homeless.
And yet when I talk to people abouthomelessness, whether that's in government
(02:41):
or other charities or people on the streetor whoever, everybody automatically starts
talking about somebody who's homeless on astreet and starts talking about urban
centres and so on.
where many of our clients are actuallyfound homeless in fields.
We've found people who were sleeping intrees, literally balancing on branches of
(03:05):
trees to keep safe.
We find people in woods hiding underhedgerows, all sorts of situations they
can be in.
And yet there's a type of general feelingthat the countryside doesn't have
homelessness.
This is an urban problem.
(03:25):
So we started the podcast because we wantto just share with the people of England,
just the fact that actually homelessnessis rife across the whole of the rural
sector of Great Britain.
And that probably when you're drivingthrough the Lake District, you pass wooded
areas or hedgerows where people will besleeping rough tonight and people just
(03:47):
don't see it and they just don't assumeit.
And so...
Governments over years have channeledfunding into urban centres.
They don't channel it into ruralcommunities.
Services are very sparse in ruralcommunities.
So people who are in need, then move fromtheir rural community where maybe they've
(04:09):
been brought up or been living, and theygo to the urban centres where everybody
says the homelessness problem is.
So...
What we're hoping to do is just to getpeople understanding that there is
homelessness in rural settings, thatactually if money was invested into those
rural settings and the services offeredwere the right services, that actually
people would love to stay in those ruralsettings and would like to prefer to be
(04:30):
supported there.
And we just want to readdress thismisunderstanding that homelessness is an
urban problem.
We want people to realize it's a country-wide problem, including the rural parts
of Britain.
And a number of those issues that youmentioned just then.
We're going to be looking at morespecifically and in detail in some of the
future episodes of the Rural Homelessnesspodcast.
(04:52):
If you're listening to this and this issomething that sparked an interest or
something that's close to your heart, whydon't you hit that subscribe button and
keep listening to the podcast because weare going to be exploring all these themes
and more as we go through the podcast.
So Keith, you mentioned 25th anniversary.
(05:13):
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And being the start of a podcast for the25th anniversary, I guess it's appropriate
to hit the rewind button and just find outa bit about the history, find out how it
all began.
(05:34):
So how did the Ferry Project start?
Well, as with all the best stories, it'squite convoluted and has many strands to
it.
I think the best place to start then iswhere the idea came from rather than some
of the practicalities and where thedecision in a sense was made to actually
(05:58):
start doing this work, which of course wasnot called the ferry project at the time.
So we actually need to go back to the1990s and
I was a school teacher, I'm a chemist bytraining and I was a head of chemistry at
a secondary school and I was also in thepastoral system and also looking to
(06:21):
develop my skills as a counselor.
And at the same time, I was part of achurch called the King's Church and I've
been a Christian myself since I was 19.
And in those settings, in the churchsettings where we were, what we were
finding was people were meeting members ofthe church and asking members of the
(06:43):
church for help or members of the churchwere reaching out to help because they
were homeless.
And those individuals, there was youngpeople, there was ex -military, there was
people who were just traveling around thecountryside because they were looking for
work.
So there was a range of people.
But what was clear was there was nostatutory sector response.
(07:06):
So, you know, nobody was doing something,but the churches were.
So these different churches in the town,ours was just one of them.
But the response that people were givingwas really quite different.
So some of the Church of England churcheshad vicarages and people who in those days
were called tramps, but people whoactually run a type of walking.
(07:30):
route around the country getting jobs,seasonal jobs at different times.
But they were known to these bickeragesand they would turn up there and say hello
it's me again you know here's John can youhelp me like you did last year and that
might mean they got a bed or be allowed tosleep in a barn or something and they were
given a bit of food and possibly somemoney and they'd be pointed in the right
(07:52):
direction to get a job and a local farmerwho was picking apples say or strawberries
would
We might give them some temporaryaccommodation whilst they worked for them
doing some strawberry picking.
So there's that group of people.
The young people who were homeless, peoplesay from the age of 16 to 21, 22, the
(08:14):
social services might deal with some ofthem, but quite a few of them were just
sleeping rough and just sleeping withfriends on sofas and stuff.
And they might have got kicked out fromparents.
And locally, we still had quite a numberof young girls who were being...
and removed from the family home becausehe got pregnant while he was teenagers.
So we had all that type of homelessnessgoing on.
(08:36):
And as I say, ex -military people who werewalking here or in the area.
So the churches were all supporting themand somebody might take them into the
family.
Somebody might give them a bit of money.
Somebody might put them in a hotel.
So all this was going on.
And for me personally, we were involvedand...
We were supporting families who werehelping.
(08:59):
Now, I just thought, I was a teacher, Iwas busy doing things.
I had a family and five children myself.
And I just saw my job as being friendlyand being nice to these people and perhaps
giving some money occasionally orwhatever.
But one Christmas, I was cooking theChristmas dinner.
(09:22):
So I'm a chemist, I enjoy cooking.
It's just...
another form of chemistry really.
So I was cooking the dinner, preparing it,I was peeling potatoes.
I was in my house, my kitchen, and my fivekids were in the lounge having unwrapped
some of their presents and thegrandparents were there, my wife was
there, and the radio was on and carolsfrom King's College and all the rest of
(09:45):
it.
And as I was preparing the dinner, I justfelt intensely guilty.
And because I'm a Christian, I prayedabout that and
and asking God, well, I don't understandreally why I'm feeling guilty here is this
idyllic scene and I should be just verygrateful for what I've got.
(10:05):
But then it was very clear I felt God putthe image in my head of some of the
homeless people I knew.
And I felt a personal challenge toactually do something about it.
And my instant response was to say, no, Ican't.
I've got a family, a young family.
If we find children, my wife was stayingat home looking after the ones who were
(10:29):
not at school.
And so, and I was teaching.
I said, well, if my job goes, where'ssomebody coming from?
And so on, I can't do anything.
And anyway, I don't know what I'm doing.
What would I do?
How can we help?
What's the problem?
But I couldn't shake off the feeling as Iwas preparing the dinner that I needed to
(10:51):
do something.
So.
So by the time I'd finished peeling thepotatoes, I said to God, okay, I'm
prepared to do something.
I just don't know what it is.
You'll need to tell me what it is.
And so from that point on, I felt in asense, if you like, commissioned to go and
do something.
So I started talking to people and askingwhat could we do to help?
(11:13):
And I started asking all sorts of people.
So that was where, in a sense, if youlike, Fairy Project started.
at that point where I made a decisionthat, okay, I would obey what I felt God
was saying to me.
I'm going to do something about the issue.
Was it an immediate response?
Did you, do you, I don't know, you hang upyour teaching cloak.
(11:35):
I don't think that's quite a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You give your whistle back to the officeor whatever it was.
and then you kind of went out and I don'tknow, started a homeless charity.
Or were there other things that led up toit?
Was it immediate?
Was it gradual?
How did that happen for you?
(11:56):
Okay, so as I said, all good stories are agood convolution.
So simply put, the answer is no, it wasn'timmediate.
I did start to talk to people immediately.
So, you know, even over the Christmasholidays and so on, I started to talk to
people about the problem and try tounderstand what was going on.
I started to talk to local churches andstarted to suggest.
(12:17):
possible solutions.
And one of the initial solutions thathappened after a couple of months was the
churches agreed to get a pot of moneytogether to actually put people up in the
hotel.
And that had a mixed reception in thesense that we actually did house a few
people, but on the whole, the individualswho were housed struggled in the hotel.
(12:43):
And the hotel themselves struggled withthe people we were placing there.
And there was a clash.
So in the end, the hotel asked us not todo it anymore.
So that meant we needed to come up withanother solution.
Anyway, while all this was going on,personally, something unusual happened to
me, which was whilst I was literally in aclass teaching, I lost my voice.
(13:08):
So I was literally talking one minute andmy voice disappeared whilst I was talking.
Now I had had bouts of...
laryngitis throughout my teaching career.
I was about 14 years in at this time.
So it wasn't totally unknown and normallyit comes back after about a week.
(13:30):
So I just assumed that that would happen.
But in this particular case it didn't.
And the being unable to talk properlylasted for six, eight weeks and the
doctors really couldn't explain what wasgoing on.
They just said don't worry, it will comeback.
Anyway, we got to Christmas.
(13:52):
This is now the following year after theone where I'd been peeling potatoes.
And my voice still wasn't right.
So I'd be talking, it'd be like being backin puberty again.
One minute it'd go up high and anotherminute it'd be, you couldn't hear it at
all.
Then it'd be all right for a few minutesand stuff like this.
So the voice was all over the show.
(14:14):
And I had to tell my school if I was goingto go back to work in January or not.
And I felt that really I should.
So I thought I'd best just see how good myvoice was.
So in one of the carol services that I wasattending that year, I just tried to sing.
I hadn't sung for eight weeks.
(14:35):
I just thought I'd just try a verse orsomething.
Anyway, so I started to sing, I don'tknow, four words in.
literally my voice just disappeared sowent to literally nothing.
I didn't particularly feel anything, Ijust couldn't make any noise at all.
So I obviously went to the doctors andthey started looking and I had to go to
(14:59):
consultants and see them etc and the endresult was that they told me that I had
torn to the muscles and controlled myvocal cords.
And I was silent because I couldn'tactually make my vocal cords meet in a way
that would allow them to make a noise.
And that in the end lasted over fourmonths.
(15:20):
So I couldn't make any noise for thatperiod of time.
After that, I started to get a very, veryquiet voice.
And in the end, the doctors sent me to aspeech therapist.
And what they told me was I needed tolearn how to speak again.
that my vocal cords, my muscles had beenpermanently damaged and I had to learn how
(15:41):
to talk with the damaged muscles.
And that process took me another 18, 20months to do before my voice actually came
back.
So obviously being a teacher with no voiceis a challenge.
So over those two years where I lost myvoice and then tried to learn how to do
it, I was eventually, well,
(16:06):
I couldn't teach.
I had to eventually retire.
So the doctors told me that if I actuallycontinued teaching, I could lose my voice
again permanently.
They made me retire on the grounds of illhealth.
And I was actually told I couldn't teachin the public sector again.
So whilst all that was going on, my wifewent out to work.
(16:28):
I stayed at home and started looking afterthe children, which was fun with no voice.
I always wear in.
Lots of stories I could tell you aboutwhat that was like, because the youngest
at that time was about three and a half,four.
He thought it was very amusing.
But in all that, in amongst all thatchaos, the one thing I now had was time.
(16:49):
And I felt perfectly well.
So what that allowed me to do was to startproperly thinking about setting up a
charity and getting it going.
the bits of homelessness, what did weactually want to do?
And rather bizarrely, I'll say I managedto start talking to people.
(17:10):
The way I managed to talk to people was onthe phone.
So the phone's an interesting thing.
Certainly at that time, there wasn't thatmany mobile phones around, you used just
the handset.
People assumed that the phone was notworking very well.
So they listened on a phone, if your voicewas very quiet, they listened intently.
And actually you could have conversationswith somebody even with a very quiet voice
because they were listening.
(17:30):
Whereas in the set if I was in the roomwith them, my voice wouldn't carry more
than a foot.
So So in the room, I was in situationswhere friends of me my family and myself I
was once invited to a Lunch with somebodyand I went out and my wife went out with
me.
I sat down And my friends asked my wifewhether I wanted a drink because they just
(17:54):
automatically assumed I couldn't answer
So it was the classic, you know, does ittake sugar concept for somebody with a
disability, which I found reallysurprising and in fact was really quite
challenging.
But on the phone I could talk, on thephone people listened.
(18:15):
And so during that two years we had thediscussions about it and eventually using
support from a charity in London calledthe Oasis Trust, they helped us to set up.
what became the ferry project.
So in 1999, in May, 1999, the ferryproject became a registered charity.
By which time we had about 11 volunteersand we had a few hundred pounds and we
(18:39):
were starting to help some homeless peopleget some accommodation.
So yeah, and there's lots of them aroundin bits and pieces, that story, but that
gives you the two basic strands.
Yeah.
And so we've now got the...
charity established and you said you triedkind of in the very early beginnings sort
(19:01):
of trying to house people in a local hoteland that didn't go well.
So what was the new plan now that you hadkind of set up as a charity?
Just learned that trying to house peoplein a hotel wasn't particularly the best
solution.
(19:21):
So...
how did you start to house homeless peopleand help them?
Okay, so the vision we had, so if we goback to the church, so remember this was
all based around the fact that people weretrying to help homeless people in church.
Where we saw the best outcomes and thebest success was where somebody invited
(19:42):
the homeless person into their family.
It was very costly for the family in thesense that this person was very demanding,
the homeless people would be verydemanding.
and really at times quite challenging.
But for those where the family and thehomeless person got to well, the homeless
person felt part of the family, they feltsafe and secure, and they themselves
(20:06):
started to change.
And we saw some remarkable changes inpeople's lives over that.
So the model that we started to go downwas the idea of creating a family.
So,
Could we create, could we get a propertyby house, say, have a couple that would be
prepared to live with the homeless peopleand support them in that new home?
(20:33):
So that was our concept.
So with the small amount of money we'vebeen given by the local people and
volunteers from local churches, weactually rented a couple of rooms in a
very large house that somebody had, wherethey used to let rooms out.
And that was in a place called BeaufortRoad in West Beach.
(20:56):
And so we had one room where a homelessperson was sleeping and living.
We had another room where a couple whowere supporting that homeless person were
staying and they had a shared kitchen andshared bathing facilities.
And back in what that would be 99, yeah,that's where we started.
(21:16):
At the same time,
And we realized very quickly that onceyou've got one homeless person, if there's
a second homeless person, you don't haveanywhere to put them.
So, so we started to think about that.
We, and the model was working.
It was a young lad.
He was only 18 and he was doing reallywell.
He'd started, before he came to us, he'dbeen living on the streets for a couple of
(21:40):
months and we'd, you know, we'd offered tohelp him.
And he'd just started to be offered drugsand he'd just been started.
be offered alcohol on a regular basis.
And when it came into the work we weredoing, he actually turned away from all
that.
So we didn't go down that route, he couldeasily have done.
(22:00):
And indeed, we helped him to build hisrelationship back with his parents.
So we saw a big success story there, andthat gave us the desire to go on.
So we actually approached the King'sChurch, which was what I was part of.
And we asked them if people could help usfinancially.
and indeed the leadership of the King'sChurch agreed to take a special
(22:23):
collection.
That collection, we use the story of Jesusfeeding the 5 ,000 people.
So in that story, Jesus taught the people,it was late in the evening, they needed
food, so he got them all sat down and thenthey said, well, what food's available?
And the only food that the disciples couldfind in amongst this massive group of
(22:45):
people was a boy with...
five small barley loaves, probably buns,and a couple of small fish.
And they presented this to Jesus.
Jesus prayed over it.
And then they gave the food out and itdidn't get used up.
There was always more.
And in the end, they fed the 5 ,000 menand their families who were with them.
So that could have been 8 ,000 people.
(23:07):
Out to the small amount this boy brought.
So the leadership team said to the churchas a whole, look, even if you can only
spare...
two pounds if you're prepared to give whatyou can give.
We understand that everybody's gotchallenges in their life and their own
financial need.
Just give what you can give, howeversmall, if you're prepared to give it.
(23:30):
And at that time they gave about two and ahalf thousand pounds.
And what that money did then was allow usto, one, consider alternative
accommodation, but two, to go out andemploy a fundraiser.
and the fundraiser then over the next 12months raised £100 ,000.
(23:54):
Now, one of the families in that storydidn't have money to spare, but we were
struggling to try and rent a house.
The moment we told them we wanted to useit for homes, people, everybody said they
wouldn't rent it to us.
So this couple...
came to us and when they said bring whatyou can they said well look we can't give
(24:20):
you any money we don't got any money butwe've got a four -bedroomed house and we
don't need a four -bedroomed house so ifyou can pay us some rent for our house
we'll take the rent that you pay us andwe'll rent another house a smaller house
for ourselves and you can have our bighouse so they very generously moved out to
(24:41):
their house
and we paid them a comparatively smallrent for the house that we got.
And they rented a small two -bedroomhouse.
And for a year, they lived in a rentedhouse and we lived in their house.
And that allowed us to start doing somemuch bigger work.
So we supported in that year about eightpeople.
(25:03):
And again, saw some incredible changes.
And that was the first time that we cameto the attention of the local authority.
and they started to notice that we wereactually doing something and there was
something going on.
And with the money that we got, the twoand a half thousand from the church that
allowed us to get this fundraiser.
And so the whole thing started.
(25:23):
So if we're actually saying when in asense did the work of the Ferry project
truly start, that was about then, whichwas about the turn of the millennium.
And that's really where it started to getgoing.
And from the money that the fundraiserraised, this...
was a hundred thousand pounds.
We could buy a house and employ, onemember of staff, to actually live in the
(25:47):
house.
and so the model of this family reallytook off and really got going and met all
down to the incredible generosity of, afew, a few people who, answered that call
to give what they could.
That's incredible.
So starting from very small, humble.
(26:08):
beginnings to finally getting enough moneyto buy your first property to house
people.
Where is the Ferry Project now?
25 years on, this small offering, what canyou give and see what can be done with it?
(26:29):
Well what's been done with it?
Where are we at today in terms of
housing and services and everything else.
Okay, so let's share where it goes.
So if we look at where Ferry Project isnow, so Ferry Project is the primary
homeless provider for Fentland DistrictCouncil.
(26:50):
So we're still a charity, we're anindependent charity in West Beach and we
now can have accommodation which canaccommodate up to I think it's 84 people.
So we have a lot, we...
Over the years, one way or another, weraised enough money to buy a hotel and we
redeveloped that hotel.
(27:11):
And we now own that hotel and the hotelitself now provides hostel accommodation
for 24 people, each with their own roomsand their own bathroom facilities and so
on.
We have built in the courtyard of thehotel because we're very fortunate that we
have some grounds around it.
So we built another nine rooms ofemergency accommodation so people...
(27:33):
coming off the street, can have emergencyaccommodation, literally making things
available for a person on a nightly basis.
We've been commissioned by centralgovernment through the Federal Institute
of Council to provide support to roughsleepers.
So anybody sleeping rough can besupported.
We have an outreach team that actuallygoes out and tries to find people who are
(27:57):
sleeping rough.
we can provide people who are in danger ofbecoming homeless with support.
And so last year we supported over 100people who were in danger of becoming
homeless to stay in their ownaccommodation and not become homeless
themselves.
And in an average year now on top of that100 that we support to not be homeless, we
(28:20):
support another couple of hundred homelesspeople by giving them accommodation and
support.
And then Wisbech itself, as far as thattype of basic,
homelessness support is concerned, we'rethe primary ones, there are some services
for young people, but nothing for anybodyelse.
And so we're providing that support tothem.
Included in that, all sorts oforganisations have come on board.
(28:42):
So let's pick up things like health.
So a local GP surgery now comes into ourhostel and delivers physical health
support to people in the hostel itself.
And they provide all sorts of additionalsupport because...
homeless people have complex needs.
Our local mental health trust providefunding to help us to have a mental health
(29:06):
nurse based in our hostel.
And she provides mental health support andcarries out assessments with individuals
and that enables them to get mental healthsupport quickly if necessary.
And a good example would be, let's saythey were on medication because they have
a mental health problem.
Then,
she can help them access medication ifthey've lost it.
(29:28):
So obviously when they leave whateveraccommodation they're in, very often they
don't take medication with them.
They might come to us and be schizophrenicand not have their medication.
She can get them very quickly theirmedication re -prescribed and especially
find their records and so on.
And we can provide them with support veryquickly that's appropriate to them.
(29:50):
We employ some 43, 44 staff.
because we're a 24 -7 organisation, so wealways have waking staff and we're
providing the service all the time.
So the accommodation, these 24 bedrooms,they get support from staff whenever they
need it and whenever it's appropriate.
We have a worker who provides employmentsupport and we run activities.
(30:15):
In the hotel, it's big enough that we'vegot a training kitchen and we actually
teach.
Our clients are how to cook and we're alsoteaching, offering training courses to the
community so that people on low incomesand indeed people who are prepared to pay,
we're very fortunate.
We've got a very highly qualified chef whoworks with us.
She's done a wonderful job so we havesomething called Ferry Project Cookery
(30:37):
School.
Again, the hotel's big enough that we havea space where a local arts group has now
put it.
We've got an art gallery based in thecentre so...
That is open to our clients all the time24 7.
So the homeless people can actually go andlook at art at any time of the day.
If you want to look at it at four o 'clockin the morning, we are waking staff.
(30:59):
They can go along and have a look.
They can get their own private viewing.
There's not many people who actually livesomewhere where they can actually have
their own art gallery.
But they get that.
And they the arts group that puts it oncalled Blackfield creatives, they actually
provide.
sessions for the clients and help them andencourage them to engage with art and
(31:23):
various forms of art therapy.
The support workers, we do somethingcalled trauma informed support where we
take into account the experiences thatpeople have had so that we can support
them in a way that's appropriate to them.
And that way each person is treatedgenuinely as an individual.
And we're in the process of redevelopingour building, this hotel.
(31:47):
to actually create spaces so that eachroom, each area can be specific for a
particular person, type of person withparticular needs.
So some people need bigger rooms, somepeople need smaller ones, some we've got a
women only area so that they can have asafe space to be in if they've suffered
(32:07):
male violence and so on.
And we've got various other spaces wherepeople can have their particular needs met
and get the particular support.
And of it all, the hotel itself is a gradetwo style listed hotel.
I was just about to say, you've beensaying this hotel, I was going to say,
it's a really nice building.
(32:28):
This grade two listed Georgian periodfeatures everywhere building.
It's really nice.
Absolutely.
We're incredibly fortunate.
One of the advantages, so we were talkingearlier about being in a rural setting.
One of the advantages of being in a ruralsetting that's not associated with
tourism.
is you can buy property comparativelycheaply.
(32:49):
So we were able to purchase this hotel.
For example, it's got a wonderful plasterceiling where the art gallery is based.
And the plaster ceiling is a fine exampleof an early 19th century plaster ceiling,
wall fancy, embossed plaster work, and soon.
(33:10):
So it's beautiful.
If you're listening on the podcast, if yougo to...
If you go to our website, so that's www.fairproject .org .uk, you can see
pictures of it and there's some reallybeautiful, beautiful bits in it.
And when we were buying the hotel, one ofthe reasons we bought it was we wanted to
make a statement to homes people.
(33:32):
So, and, you know, excuse me if you're abit, if you find this a bit challenging,
but the reality is that every homesperson, all the people they know,
have in one way or another rejected them.
Those individuals might not have done soaggressively or whatever, and there might
be valid reasons why they couldn't havesomebody living with them.
(33:55):
But that means that every person thathomeless person knows said to them, you
cannot stay with me.
And whether people like it or not, thatactually is a form of rejection.
So when homeless people come to us,
One of the things that they come to uswith is a feeling of being rejected by
everybody.
And therefore their self -esteem and theirself -value is really challenged.
(34:18):
So what we wanted to do by buying thisbeautiful building was to say to them,
well, whatever's gone before, when youarrive with us, we're telling you, you're
worth it.
And we're not just saying you're worth it.
We're not putting you into a dingy room insome grotty, grotty thing, whatever your
(34:38):
image of a...
poor hostilities and I'm glad to say thatthere's not many of those around anymore.
But with us, we could genuinely say, no,we're bringing you into a Georgian listed
building.
You've got your own room, you've got yourown bathroom, you've got these wonderful
facilities.
And just so that listeners get an idea,when you stand in your building and you
(35:04):
look across the river directly oppositethrough the windows,
there is another beautiful Georgianbuilding, but this one's owned by the
National Trust and people pay good moneyto go and walk up and down and have a
little look in that one.
So yeah, it's really good.
And the interesting thing, just as anaside, the interesting thing is that the
(35:27):
National Trust property and our propertywas built by the same builder.
It was designed by the same architect andthey were built within a couple of years
of each other.
And as you say, Matt, they face eachother.
And we often said there was obviously akeep up with the Joneses going on here
because the two buildings were clearlybeing built with each other.
(35:48):
But over the years, that one was taken bya family called the Peckovers who were
part of the original Barclays Bank.
And ours was kept within the more normalcommunity environment.
And actually,
came into the ownership of a person whoowned the water rights to Wisbech.
(36:09):
And when the water rights eventually werenationalized, it became part of the water
board as well.
And then was given to Wisbech town councilto act as council offices.
So this building's had many lives.
But throughout it all, what we've seenthen obviously is this is a prestigious
building.
It is one of the prime buildings in thetown.
(36:32):
So when somebody is homeless in Wisbech,they don't get put in a corner.
They come to one of the best buildings inthe town where we can say, well, we value
you.
We know you're in difficult times andmaybe you've made some bad decisions, but
actually we value you and we want to helpyou get back on your feet.
And the accommodation you've mentioned atthe moment is just your primary
(36:55):
accommodation.
You've got more sort of move onaccommodation.
as well around and about, haven't you?
So obviously, as people, so thataccommodation in the hotel, we staff it 24
seven.
And the idea is that we help people whoneed support all the time.
So it's available there.
If they feel down at three o 'clock in themorning, there's somebody to talk to, and
(37:19):
so on.
And it's a very protected environment aswell.
We have a courtyard, we have nice gates,we can provide them with a safe, very
safe, secure environment that's lovely tobe in.
But obviously we want people to get backinto the community.
And I'll have to tell you about the nameferry project a bit later and explain why
we called it the ferry project.
But within that then, we then have workedwith housing association partners and
(37:45):
they've rented us property and we nowmanage those properties and provide the
support property.
But we put people there and their flatsand their normal accommodation that people
would see around the town.
And the individual can live in there.
And we can give them what's calledfloating support.
We go and visit them.
We have telephone calls with them, checkeverything's okay.
If they need any help, if there's a letterthat they don't know how to respond to, if
(38:09):
they're having difficulty with neighbors,if whatever the scenario is, our staff
will get involved and we support them overthose challenges.
And if they start getting into bad habits,we can challenge.
Cause one of the things that we need to dois we act as a mirror.
If people are behaving in a way that, and.
that's inappropriate and they say to us,of course I'm not doing whatever it is.
(38:32):
We can say, well, actually we've seen youdo this and we're not, we're not rejecting
you, but we're just letting you know.
You can't say, you can't say you're notdrinking if we've seen that you come home
drunk.
You can't say that you're not swearing atpeople or being aggressive if we've seen
you swearing at people or beingaggressive.
We can't say that you're not, I'm notdepressed when actually we know you've not
(38:55):
come out of your room for four days.
and you've isolated yourself totally.
So we can act as a mirror and we can sayto people, look, we need you, we want to
support you here, how can we help and soon.
So we have that accommodation and evendown to with more recently managed to get
six modular homes built.
(39:16):
So for those people who really struggle ina community environment where our hostel
is obviously a common all living spaces,lots of people living together.
So for individuals who struggle in thatenvironment, we've been able to put them
into what are like 22 foot long caravans,but they're actually built, you know,
proper built houses and they have theirown lounge and bedroom and stuff.
(39:38):
And where it's appropriate for people tobe in that scenario, we can now put people
into that environment and provide supportin that.
So the aim is to try and personalize theaccommodation that we can offer, depend
upon the needs of the individual andreally think that through carefully, both
with them and ourselves.
So yeah, it's quite comprehensive.
So at the moment, as I say, it's about 84pieces of accommodation and some of the
(40:03):
housing associations that we work withnow, employers to actually go into their
property with their own tenants and workwith some of those to help them maintain
their tenancies and not to fall intoproblems.
So we're trying to provide the support andindeed we now work in other towns in
Finland.
So there's Whist Beach, but we also workin the
(40:24):
town of March, which is next to it.
And then the town of Whittlesey, which isanother one in the area.
So we're starting to provide services intothose towns as well.
Really good.
So where did the name, the ferry projectcome from then?
Okay.
So, so let's go back again then to when wewere in the property that where the family
(40:50):
had moved out.
and we were looking at our name and so on.
We were, at the time, one of theproperties that we were looking,
considering buying, what had been a pubthat was in West Beach and the pub was
called the Ferry Inn.
And it had a big bar on the ground floorand then it had, I don't know, five or six
(41:12):
bedrooms upstairs.
And we type of imagined that maybe we diddeliver some services out to the ground
floor and used the five or six roomsupstairs as the...
as the accommodation for the homelesspeople.
But unfortunately somebody beat us to itand they bought it and yeah, and off it
went.
But the name, the ferry inn, stuck withus.
(41:33):
And indeed, when we registered the charityin May, 99, we realized that the concept
of the ferry suited what we were planningvery well.
So a ferry, if we go back to the nineties,there was no tunnel, there was no tunnel.
So if you wanted to get from England tothe continent,
you had to get on a ferry and if youwanted to take your car.
(41:56):
So when you get on to a ferry, you mightbe totally independent before you get on.
When you get on to the ferry, the ferryprovides everything you need.
So there's a cafe on there, there'sadvice, if necessary there's a bedroom and
stuff like this.
There's doctors and all sorts of things.
And when you get to France itself, you canget off the ferry.
(42:21):
and you become totally independent again.
So what happens is you go from a place youdon't want to be to a place that you do
want to be.
And while you're in that process, you'rebeing carried by the ferry and given the
services and the support you need to getyou to the place you want to go.
So for us, that was a perfect image ofwhat we were trying to do.
(42:41):
What we weren't trying to do was take overpeople's lives and accumulate vast numbers
of people who would be on our
lists and so on.
What we were looking to do was providethis support for this period of time to
help people move from somewhere where theydon't want to be homeless to a place where
they do want to be housed and support themon the way.
(43:03):
And over the 25 years then, how manypeople have you managed to carry from one
side of the river to the other on yourferry?
Okay, so...
We've obviously done a count recentlybecause of the anniversary.
And what we've found then is we've got, wecan actually demonstrate we supported over
(43:26):
three and a half thousand people now in apopulation of, as I say, just over 30
,000.
So it's quite a significant part of thetown has been supported one way or another
over the years.
And indeed, I haven't gone, another aspectof the work we're doing is we're now got
involved in preventative agenda stuff.
We've tried to,
We're trying to help people not gethomeless.
(43:48):
So part of that is we've, we now run acommunity center called the Queen Mary
Center and have been doing so for the last10 years.
And in that center, then we provided abase for community groups of different
sorts to operate from.
So the Citizens Advice Bureau is based inour community center and we have
counseling services and physiotherapistsand the, the diabetes psych clinic's base
(44:14):
there.
We also have,
the classic things that go on in communitycentres like Zumba classes and we have
singing and people, you know, there'schoir that meets there and theatre
productions and people have parties andall sorts of things.
And to give you an idea of that, so overhalf a million visits have been had to the
(44:34):
community centre in the 10 years thatwe've been running that.
So we've supported that.
And we've also done work helping peopleget employment.
And over the time,
Over time we've been doing that work,we've supported over a thousand people and
now we don't have an accurate record ofhow many people got jobs because some
people don't tell us.
But we supported over a thousand people intrying to find work through all sorts of
(44:57):
different techniques.
We know that hundreds of those individualsare now employed as a result of the
support they've got.
So yes, when we start to look at it,there's been quite a lot of influence.
And let me just say, so going back to theday when I said to God, I can't do this by
(45:17):
myself.
Since then, we've had so many partners, somany people who've helped, so many people
who supported and, you know, we can talkabout that as well.
But when, if we look, yeah, some peoplejust like to hear about the finances.
If we look at the money, so...
(45:38):
That two and a half thousand pounds thatwas raised by the church back in 1999.
So now our turnover is just over twomillion, it's about 2 .2 million a year.
And I've done a calculation and we'veearned because we're, although we're a
registered charity, we operate as a socialenterprise.
(45:59):
We earn all the vast majority of our ownmoney.
Last year we earned 99 % of our own money.
So if we look at that,
Then we now had an organisation over £30million of income which we've used to
support homeless people.
And that's all been done through ourcharity.
(46:20):
So the local authority hasn't had toprovide all that support.
We've done all that.
And as a result of that, we've seen lotsof people's lives change.
That's excellent.
Thank you, Keith.
Thank you for chatting with me today.
I look forward to having more discussionswith you in future episodes of the Rural
(46:43):
Homelessness podcast.
But for today, thank you so much for beingwith us.
Yeah, thanks for the time, Matt.
And thank you as well for listening to theRural Homelessness podcast.
This podcast is going to come out twice amonth on the 1st and the 15th.
of every month.
So if you haven't already clicked thatsubscribe button, do that and remember to
come checking back again on the 1st or the15th and there'll be another episode
(47:07):
waiting for you as we discuss more topicsand issues around rural homelessness.
Thank you for your company today and Ilook forward to seeing you soon on another
episode.
Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you for listening to the RuralHomelessness Podcast.
Brought to you
by The Ferry Project.
(47:28):
Visit our website on www .ferryproject.org .uk.
This is the Rural Homelessness Podcast,where we discuss the important issues
around rural homelessness, hear from thoseaffected by it, and offer some solutions.
Brought to you by the award -winninghomelessness charity, The Ferry Project.
Welcome to the Rural Homelessness Podcast.
(00:28):
Well, hello there.
Welcome aboard the Rural HomelessnessPodcast.
I'm your host, Matt McChlery Thank you somuch for joining us today.
We want to elevate and raise theconversation around rural homelessness in
the UK.
And to do that today, I am joined on ourvery first episode by the director of The
(00:49):
Ferry Project, Mr.
Keith Smith.
And The Ferry Project is celebrating its25th...
anniversary this year and this podcasthelps to celebrate all of what's happened
over that time.
And so let's begin by introducing you toKeith Smith, the director of The Ferry
(01:13):
Project, and find out a little bit moreabout how the charity first began.
So Keith Smith, welcome to the podcast.
Hello Matt, thank you.
And it's great to have you with us today.
Now, could you just explain the reason whythe Ferry Project has started this podcast
(01:38):
series?
The Ferry Project is a homelessnesscharity and we're based in a town called
Wisbech is situated in NorthCambridgeshire.
It's right on the border of Lincolnshire,Norfolk and Cambridgeshire.
And a third of the town is in Norfolk, twothirds of towns in Cambridgeshire.
and four miles up the road isLincolnshire.
(01:58):
So we're riding that niche at the top.
So, Wisbech itself is a very rural area.
It's a reasonable sized market town ofabout 30 ,000 people, but surrounding it
are just miles and miles of farmland.
And historically, Wisbech has always beenone of the agricultural areas of Great
Britain.
(02:19):
And our experience is that we startedHomeless Charity because there were lots
of homeless people in the area.
And now,
25 years on, it's our 25th anniversarythis year, we're finding that we're
supporting 300 people a year who arehomeless or in danger of becoming
homeless.
And yet when I talk to people abouthomelessness, whether that's in government
(02:41):
or other charities or people on the streetor whoever, everybody automatically starts
talking about somebody who's homeless on astreet and starts talking about urban
centres and so on.
where many of our clients are actuallyfound homeless in fields.
We've found people who were sleeping intrees, literally balancing on branches of
(03:05):
trees to keep safe.
We find people in woods hiding underhedgerows, all sorts of situations they
can be in.
And yet there's a type of general feelingthat the countryside doesn't have
homelessness.
This is an urban problem.
(03:25):
So we started the podcast because we wantto just share with the people of England,
just the fact that actually homelessnessis rife across the whole of the rural
sector of Great Britain.
And that probably when you're drivingthrough the Lake District, you pass wooded
areas or hedgerows where people will besleeping rough tonight and people just
(03:47):
don't see it and they just don't assumeit.
And so...
Governments over years have channeledfunding into urban centres.
They don't channel it into ruralcommunities.
Services are very sparse in ruralcommunities.
So people who are in need, then move fromtheir rural community where maybe they've
(04:09):
been brought up or been living, and theygo to the urban centres where everybody
says the homelessness problem is.
So...
What we're hoping to do is just to getpeople understanding that there is
homelessness in rural settings, thatactually if money was invested into those
rural settings and the services offeredwere the right services, that actually
people would love to stay in those ruralsettings and would like to prefer to be
(04:30):
supported there.
And we just want to readdress thismisunderstanding that homelessness is an
urban problem.
We want people to realize it's a country-wide problem, including the rural parts
of Britain.
And a number of those issues that youmentioned just then.
We're going to be looking at morespecifically and in detail in some of the
future episodes of the Rural Homelessnesspodcast.
(04:52):
If you're listening to this and this issomething that sparked an interest or
something that's close to your heart, whydon't you hit that subscribe button and
keep listening to the podcast because weare going to be exploring all these themes
and more as we go through the podcast.
So Keith, you mentioned 25th anniversary.
(05:13):
Congratulations.
Thank you.
And being the start of a podcast for the25th anniversary, I guess it's appropriate
to hit the rewind button and just find outa bit about the history, find out how it
all began.
(05:34):
So how did the Ferry Project start?
Well, as with all the best stories, it'squite convoluted and has many strands to
it.
I think the best place to start then iswhere the idea came from rather than some
of the practicalities and where thedecision in a sense was made to actually
(05:58):
start doing this work, which of course wasnot called the ferry project at the time.
So we actually need to go back to the1990s and
I was a school teacher, I'm a chemist bytraining and I was a head of chemistry at
a secondary school and I was also in thepastoral system and also looking to
(06:21):
develop my skills as a counselor.
And at the same time, I was part of achurch called the King's Church and I've
been a Christian myself since I was 19.
And in those settings, in the churchsettings where we were, what we were
finding was people were meeting members ofthe church and asking members of the
(06:43):
church for help or members of the churchwere reaching out to help because they
were homeless.
And those individuals, there was youngpeople, there was ex -military, there was
people who were just traveling around thecountryside because they were looking for
work.
So there was a range of people.
But what was clear was there was nostatutory sector response.
(07:06):
So, you know, nobody was doing something,but the churches were.
So these different churches in the town,ours was just one of them.
But the response that people were givingwas really quite different.
So some of the Church of England churcheshad vicarages and people who in those days
were called tramps, but people whoactually run a type of walking.
(07:30):
route around the country getting jobs,seasonal jobs at different times.
But they were known to these bickeragesand they would turn up there and say hello
it's me again you know here's John can youhelp me like you did last year and that
might mean they got a bed or be allowed tosleep in a barn or something and they were
given a bit of food and possibly somemoney and they'd be pointed in the right
(07:52):
direction to get a job and a local farmerwho was picking apples say or strawberries
would
We might give them some temporaryaccommodation whilst they worked for them
doing some strawberry picking.
So there's that group of people.
The young people who were homeless, peoplesay from the age of 16 to 21, 22, the
(08:14):
social services might deal with some ofthem, but quite a few of them were just
sleeping rough and just sleeping withfriends on sofas and stuff.
And they might have got kicked out fromparents.
And locally, we still had quite a numberof young girls who were being...
and removed from the family home becausehe got pregnant while he was teenagers.
So we had all that type of homelessnessgoing on.
(08:36):
And as I say, ex -military people who werewalking here or in the area.
So the churches were all supporting themand somebody might take them into the
family.
Somebody might give them a bit of money.
Somebody might put them in a hotel.
So all this was going on.
And for me personally, we were involvedand...
We were supporting families who werehelping.
(08:59):
Now, I just thought, I was a teacher, Iwas busy doing things.
I had a family and five children myself.
And I just saw my job as being friendlyand being nice to these people and perhaps
giving some money occasionally orwhatever.
But one Christmas, I was cooking theChristmas dinner.
(09:22):
So I'm a chemist, I enjoy cooking.
It's just...
another form of chemistry really.
So I was cooking the dinner, preparing it,I was peeling potatoes.
I was in my house, my kitchen, and my fivekids were in the lounge having unwrapped
some of their presents and thegrandparents were there, my wife was
there, and the radio was on and carolsfrom King's College and all the rest of
(09:45):
it.
And as I was preparing the dinner, I justfelt intensely guilty.
And because I'm a Christian, I prayedabout that and
and asking God, well, I don't understandreally why I'm feeling guilty here is this
idyllic scene and I should be just verygrateful for what I've got.
(10:05):
But then it was very clear I felt God putthe image in my head of some of the
homeless people I knew.
And I felt a personal challenge toactually do something about it.
And my instant response was to say, no, Ican't.
I've got a family, a young family.
If we find children, my wife was stayingat home looking after the ones who were
(10:29):
not at school.
And so, and I was teaching.
I said, well, if my job goes, where'ssomebody coming from?
And so on, I can't do anything.
And anyway, I don't know what I'm doing.
What would I do?
How can we help?
What's the problem?
But I couldn't shake off the feeling as Iwas preparing the dinner that I needed to
(10:51):
do something.
So.
So by the time I'd finished peeling thepotatoes, I said to God, okay, I'm
prepared to do something.
I just don't know what it is.
You'll need to tell me what it is.
And so from that point on, I felt in asense, if you like, commissioned to go and
do something.
So I started talking to people and askingwhat could we do to help?
(11:13):
And I started asking all sorts of people.
So that was where, in a sense, if youlike, Fairy Project started.
at that point where I made a decisionthat, okay, I would obey what I felt God
was saying to me.
I'm going to do something about the issue.
Was it an immediate response?
Did you, do you, I don't know, you hang upyour teaching cloak.
(11:35):
I don't think that's quite a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You give your whistle back to the officeor whatever it was.
and then you kind of went out and I don'tknow, started a homeless charity.
Or were there other things that led up toit?
Was it immediate?
Was it gradual?
How did that happen for you?
(11:56):
Okay, so as I said, all good stories are agood convolution.
So simply put, the answer is no, it wasn'timmediate.
I did start to talk to people immediately.
So, you know, even over the Christmasholidays and so on, I started to talk to
people about the problem and try tounderstand what was going on.
I started to talk to local churches andstarted to suggest.
(12:17):
possible solutions.
And one of the initial solutions thathappened after a couple of months was the
churches agreed to get a pot of moneytogether to actually put people up in the
hotel.
And that had a mixed reception in thesense that we actually did house a few
people, but on the whole, the individualswho were housed struggled in the hotel.
(12:43):
And the hotel themselves struggled withthe people we were placing there.
And there was a clash.
So in the end, the hotel asked us not todo it anymore.
So that meant we needed to come up withanother solution.
Anyway, while all this was going on,personally, something unusual happened to
me, which was whilst I was literally in aclass teaching, I lost my voice.
(13:08):
So I was literally talking one minute andmy voice disappeared whilst I was talking.
Now I had had bouts of...
laryngitis throughout my teaching career.
I was about 14 years in at this time.
So it wasn't totally unknown and normallyit comes back after about a week.
(13:30):
So I just assumed that that would happen.
But in this particular case it didn't.
And the being unable to talk properlylasted for six, eight weeks and the
doctors really couldn't explain what wasgoing on.
They just said don't worry, it will comeback.
Anyway, we got to Christmas.
(13:52):
This is now the following year after theone where I'd been peeling potatoes.
And my voice still wasn't right.
So I'd be talking, it'd be like being backin puberty again.
One minute it'd go up high and anotherminute it'd be, you couldn't hear it at
all.
Then it'd be all right for a few minutesand stuff like this.
So the voice was all over the show.
(14:14):
And I had to tell my school if I was goingto go back to work in January or not.
And I felt that really I should.
So I thought I'd best just see how good myvoice was.
So in one of the carol services that I wasattending that year, I just tried to sing.
I hadn't sung for eight weeks.
(14:35):
I just thought I'd just try a verse orsomething.
Anyway, so I started to sing, I don'tknow, four words in.
literally my voice just disappeared sowent to literally nothing.
I didn't particularly feel anything, Ijust couldn't make any noise at all.
So I obviously went to the doctors andthey started looking and I had to go to
(14:59):
consultants and see them etc and the endresult was that they told me that I had
torn to the muscles and controlled myvocal cords.
And I was silent because I couldn'tactually make my vocal cords meet in a way
that would allow them to make a noise.
And that in the end lasted over fourmonths.
(15:20):
So I couldn't make any noise for thatperiod of time.
After that, I started to get a very, veryquiet voice.
And in the end, the doctors sent me to aspeech therapist.
And what they told me was I needed tolearn how to speak again.
that my vocal cords, my muscles had beenpermanently damaged and I had to learn how
(15:41):
to talk with the damaged muscles.
And that process took me another 18, 20months to do before my voice actually came
back.
So obviously being a teacher with no voiceis a challenge.
So over those two years where I lost myvoice and then tried to learn how to do
it, I was eventually, well,
(16:06):
I couldn't teach.
I had to eventually retire.
So the doctors told me that if I actuallycontinued teaching, I could lose my voice
again permanently.
They made me retire on the grounds of illhealth.
And I was actually told I couldn't teachin the public sector again.
So whilst all that was going on, my wifewent out to work.
(16:28):
I stayed at home and started looking afterthe children, which was fun with no voice.
I always wear in.
Lots of stories I could tell you aboutwhat that was like, because the youngest
at that time was about three and a half,four.
He thought it was very amusing.
But in all that, in amongst all thatchaos, the one thing I now had was time.
(16:49):
And I felt perfectly well.
So what that allowed me to do was to startproperly thinking about setting up a
charity and getting it going.
the bits of homelessness, what did weactually want to do?
And rather bizarrely, I'll say I managedto start talking to people.
(17:10):
The way I managed to talk to people was onthe phone.
So the phone's an interesting thing.
Certainly at that time, there wasn't thatmany mobile phones around, you used just
the handset.
People assumed that the phone was notworking very well.
So they listened on a phone, if your voicewas very quiet, they listened intently.
And actually you could have conversationswith somebody even with a very quiet voice
because they were listening.
(17:30):
Whereas in the set if I was in the roomwith them, my voice wouldn't carry more
than a foot.
So So in the room, I was in situationswhere friends of me my family and myself I
was once invited to a Lunch with somebodyand I went out and my wife went out with
me.
I sat down And my friends asked my wifewhether I wanted a drink because they just
(17:54):
automatically assumed I couldn't answer
So it was the classic, you know, does ittake sugar concept for somebody with a
disability, which I found reallysurprising and in fact was really quite
challenging.
But on the phone I could talk, on thephone people listened.
(18:15):
And so during that two years we had thediscussions about it and eventually using
support from a charity in London calledthe Oasis Trust, they helped us to set up.
what became the ferry project.
So in 1999, in May, 1999, the ferryproject became a registered charity.
By which time we had about 11 volunteersand we had a few hundred pounds and we
(18:39):
were starting to help some homeless peopleget some accommodation.
So yeah, and there's lots of them aroundin bits and pieces, that story, but that
gives you the two basic strands.
Yeah.
And so we've now got the...
charity established and you said you triedkind of in the very early beginnings sort
(19:01):
of trying to house people in a local hoteland that didn't go well.
So what was the new plan now that you hadkind of set up as a charity?
Just learned that trying to house peoplein a hotel wasn't particularly the best
solution.
(19:21):
So...
how did you start to house homeless peopleand help them?
Okay, so the vision we had, so if we goback to the church, so remember this was
all based around the fact that people weretrying to help homeless people in church.
Where we saw the best outcomes and thebest success was where somebody invited
(19:42):
the homeless person into their family.
It was very costly for the family in thesense that this person was very demanding,
the homeless people would be verydemanding.
and really at times quite challenging.
But for those where the family and thehomeless person got to well, the homeless
person felt part of the family, they feltsafe and secure, and they themselves
(20:06):
started to change.
And we saw some remarkable changes inpeople's lives over that.
So the model that we started to go downwas the idea of creating a family.
So,
Could we create, could we get a propertyby house, say, have a couple that would be
prepared to live with the homeless peopleand support them in that new home?
(20:33):
So that was our concept.
So with the small amount of money we'vebeen given by the local people and
volunteers from local churches, weactually rented a couple of rooms in a
very large house that somebody had, wherethey used to let rooms out.
And that was in a place called BeaufortRoad in West Beach.
(20:56):
And so we had one room where a homelessperson was sleeping and living.
We had another room where a couple whowere supporting that homeless person were
staying and they had a shared kitchen andshared bathing facilities.
And back in what that would be 99, yeah,that's where we started.
(21:16):
At the same time,
And we realized very quickly that onceyou've got one homeless person, if there's
a second homeless person, you don't haveanywhere to put them.
So, so we started to think about that.
We, and the model was working.
It was a young lad.
He was only 18 and he was doing reallywell.
He'd started, before he came to us, he'dbeen living on the streets for a couple of
(21:40):
months and we'd, you know, we'd offered tohelp him.
And he'd just started to be offered drugsand he'd just been started.
be offered alcohol on a regular basis.
And when it came into the work we weredoing, he actually turned away from all
that.
So we didn't go down that route, he couldeasily have done.
(22:00):
And indeed, we helped him to build hisrelationship back with his parents.
So we saw a big success story there, andthat gave us the desire to go on.
So we actually approached the King'sChurch, which was what I was part of.
And we asked them if people could help usfinancially.
and indeed the leadership of the King'sChurch agreed to take a special
(22:23):
collection.
That collection, we use the story of Jesusfeeding the 5 ,000 people.
So in that story, Jesus taught the people,it was late in the evening, they needed
food, so he got them all sat down and thenthey said, well, what food's available?
And the only food that the disciples couldfind in amongst this massive group of
(22:45):
people was a boy with...
five small barley loaves, probably buns,and a couple of small fish.
And they presented this to Jesus.
Jesus prayed over it.
And then they gave the food out and itdidn't get used up.
There was always more.
And in the end, they fed the 5 ,000 menand their families who were with them.
So that could have been 8 ,000 people.
(23:07):
Out to the small amount this boy brought.
So the leadership team said to the churchas a whole, look, even if you can only
spare...
two pounds if you're prepared to give whatyou can give.
We understand that everybody's gotchallenges in their life and their own
financial need.
Just give what you can give, howeversmall, if you're prepared to give it.
(23:30):
And at that time they gave about two and ahalf thousand pounds.
And what that money did then was allow usto, one, consider alternative
accommodation, but two, to go out andemploy a fundraiser.
and the fundraiser then over the next 12months raised £100 ,000.
(23:54):
Now, one of the families in that storydidn't have money to spare, but we were
struggling to try and rent a house.
The moment we told them we wanted to useit for homes, people, everybody said they
wouldn't rent it to us.
So this couple...
came to us and when they said bring whatyou can they said well look we can't give
(24:20):
you any money we don't got any money butwe've got a four -bedroomed house and we
don't need a four -bedroomed house so ifyou can pay us some rent for our house
we'll take the rent that you pay us andwe'll rent another house a smaller house
for ourselves and you can have our bighouse so they very generously moved out to
(24:41):
their house
and we paid them a comparatively smallrent for the house that we got.
And they rented a small two -bedroomhouse.
And for a year, they lived in a rentedhouse and we lived in their house.
And that allowed us to start doing somemuch bigger work.
So we supported in that year about eightpeople.
(25:03):
And again, saw some incredible changes.
And that was the first time that we cameto the attention of the local authority.
and they started to notice that we wereactually doing something and there was
something going on.
And with the money that we got, the twoand a half thousand from the church that
allowed us to get this fundraiser.
And so the whole thing started.
(25:23):
So if we're actually saying when in asense did the work of the Ferry project
truly start, that was about then, whichwas about the turn of the millennium.
And that's really where it started to getgoing.
And from the money that the fundraiserraised, this...
was a hundred thousand pounds.
We could buy a house and employ, onemember of staff, to actually live in the
(25:47):
house.
and so the model of this family reallytook off and really got going and met all
down to the incredible generosity of, afew, a few people who, answered that call
to give what they could.
That's incredible.
So starting from very small, humble.
(26:08):
beginnings to finally getting enough moneyto buy your first property to house
people.
Where is the Ferry Project now?
25 years on, this small offering, what canyou give and see what can be done with it?
(26:29):
Well what's been done with it?
Where are we at today in terms of
housing and services and everything else.
Okay, so let's share where it goes.
So if we look at where Ferry Project isnow, so Ferry Project is the primary
homeless provider for Fentland DistrictCouncil.
(26:50):
So we're still a charity, we're anindependent charity in West Beach and we
now can have accommodation which canaccommodate up to I think it's 84 people.
So we have a lot, we...
Over the years, one way or another, weraised enough money to buy a hotel and we
redeveloped that hotel.
(27:11):
And we now own that hotel and the hotelitself now provides hostel accommodation
for 24 people, each with their own roomsand their own bathroom facilities and so
on.
We have built in the courtyard of thehotel because we're very fortunate that we
have some grounds around it.
So we built another nine rooms ofemergency accommodation so people...
(27:33):
coming off the street, can have emergencyaccommodation, literally making things
available for a person on a nightly basis.
We've been commissioned by centralgovernment through the Federal Institute
of Council to provide support to roughsleepers.
So anybody sleeping rough can besupported.
We have an outreach team that actuallygoes out and tries to find people who are
(27:57):
sleeping rough.
we can provide people who are in danger ofbecoming homeless with support.
And so last year we supported over 100people who were in danger of becoming
homeless to stay in their ownaccommodation and not become homeless
themselves.
And in an average year now on top of that100 that we support to not be homeless, we
(28:20):
support another couple of hundred homelesspeople by giving them accommodation and
support.
And then Wisbech itself, as far as thattype of basic,
homelessness support is concerned, we'rethe primary ones, there are some services
for young people, but nothing for anybodyelse.
And so we're providing that support tothem.
Included in that, all sorts oforganisations have come on board.
(28:42):
So let's pick up things like health.
So a local GP surgery now comes into ourhostel and delivers physical health
support to people in the hostel itself.
And they provide all sorts of additionalsupport because...
homeless people have complex needs.
Our local mental health trust providefunding to help us to have a mental health
(29:06):
nurse based in our hostel.
And she provides mental health support andcarries out assessments with individuals
and that enables them to get mental healthsupport quickly if necessary.
And a good example would be, let's saythey were on medication because they have
a mental health problem.
Then,
she can help them access medication ifthey've lost it.
(29:28):
So obviously when they leave whateveraccommodation they're in, very often they
don't take medication with them.
They might come to us and be schizophrenicand not have their medication.
She can get them very quickly theirmedication re -prescribed and especially
find their records and so on.
And we can provide them with support veryquickly that's appropriate to them.
(29:50):
We employ some 43, 44 staff.
because we're a 24 -7 organisation, so wealways have waking staff and we're
providing the service all the time.
So the accommodation, these 24 bedrooms,they get support from staff whenever they
need it and whenever it's appropriate.
We have a worker who provides employmentsupport and we run activities.
(30:15):
In the hotel, it's big enough that we'vegot a training kitchen and we actually
teach.
Our clients are how to cook and we're alsoteaching, offering training courses to the
community so that people on low incomesand indeed people who are prepared to pay,
we're very fortunate.
We've got a very highly qualified chef whoworks with us.
She's done a wonderful job so we havesomething called Ferry Project Cookery
(30:37):
School.
Again, the hotel's big enough that we havea space where a local arts group has now
put it.
We've got an art gallery based in thecentre so...
That is open to our clients all the time24 7.
So the homeless people can actually go andlook at art at any time of the day.
If you want to look at it at four o 'clockin the morning, we are waking staff.
(30:59):
They can go along and have a look.
They can get their own private viewing.
There's not many people who actually livesomewhere where they can actually have
their own art gallery.
But they get that.
And they the arts group that puts it oncalled Blackfield creatives, they actually
provide.
sessions for the clients and help them andencourage them to engage with art and
(31:23):
various forms of art therapy.
The support workers, we do somethingcalled trauma informed support where we
take into account the experiences thatpeople have had so that we can support
them in a way that's appropriate to them.
And that way each person is treatedgenuinely as an individual.
And we're in the process of redevelopingour building, this hotel.
(31:47):
to actually create spaces so that eachroom, each area can be specific for a
particular person, type of person withparticular needs.
So some people need bigger rooms, somepeople need smaller ones, some we've got a
women only area so that they can have asafe space to be in if they've suffered
(32:07):
male violence and so on.
And we've got various other spaces wherepeople can have their particular needs met
and get the particular support.
And of it all, the hotel itself is a gradetwo style listed hotel.
I was just about to say, you've beensaying this hotel, I was going to say,
it's a really nice building.
(32:28):
This grade two listed Georgian periodfeatures everywhere building.
It's really nice.
Absolutely.
We're incredibly fortunate.
One of the advantages, so we were talkingearlier about being in a rural setting.
One of the advantages of being in a ruralsetting that's not associated with
tourism.
is you can buy property comparativelycheaply.
(32:49):
So we were able to purchase this hotel.
For example, it's got a wonderful plasterceiling where the art gallery is based.
And the plaster ceiling is a fine exampleof an early 19th century plaster ceiling,
wall fancy, embossed plaster work, and soon.
(33:10):
So it's beautiful.
If you're listening on the podcast, if yougo to...
If you go to our website, so that's www.fairproject .org .uk, you can see
pictures of it and there's some reallybeautiful, beautiful bits in it.
And when we were buying the hotel, one ofthe reasons we bought it was we wanted to
make a statement to homes people.
(33:32):
So, and, you know, excuse me if you're abit, if you find this a bit challenging,
but the reality is that every homesperson, all the people they know,
have in one way or another rejected them.
Those individuals might not have done soaggressively or whatever, and there might
be valid reasons why they couldn't havesomebody living with them.
(33:55):
But that means that every person thathomeless person knows said to them, you
cannot stay with me.
And whether people like it or not, thatactually is a form of rejection.
So when homeless people come to us,
One of the things that they come to uswith is a feeling of being rejected by
everybody.
And therefore their self -esteem and theirself -value is really challenged.
(34:18):
So what we wanted to do by buying thisbeautiful building was to say to them,
well, whatever's gone before, when youarrive with us, we're telling you, you're
worth it.
And we're not just saying you're worth it.
We're not putting you into a dingy room insome grotty, grotty thing, whatever your
(34:38):
image of a...
poor hostilities and I'm glad to say thatthere's not many of those around anymore.
But with us, we could genuinely say, no,we're bringing you into a Georgian listed
building.
You've got your own room, you've got yourown bathroom, you've got these wonderful
facilities.
And just so that listeners get an idea,when you stand in your building and you
(35:04):
look across the river directly oppositethrough the windows,
there is another beautiful Georgianbuilding, but this one's owned by the
National Trust and people pay good moneyto go and walk up and down and have a
little look in that one.
So yeah, it's really good.
And the interesting thing, just as anaside, the interesting thing is that the
(35:27):
National Trust property and our propertywas built by the same builder.
It was designed by the same architect andthey were built within a couple of years
of each other.
And as you say, Matt, they face eachother.
And we often said there was obviously akeep up with the Joneses going on here
because the two buildings were clearlybeing built with each other.
(35:48):
But over the years, that one was taken bya family called the Peckovers who were
part of the original Barclays Bank.
And ours was kept within the more normalcommunity environment.
And actually,
came into the ownership of a person whoowned the water rights to Wisbech.
(36:09):
And when the water rights eventually werenationalized, it became part of the water
board as well.
And then was given to Wisbech town councilto act as council offices.
So this building's had many lives.
But throughout it all, what we've seenthen obviously is this is a prestigious
building.
It is one of the prime buildings in thetown.
(36:32):
So when somebody is homeless in Wisbech,they don't get put in a corner.
They come to one of the best buildings inthe town where we can say, well, we value
you.
We know you're in difficult times andmaybe you've made some bad decisions, but
actually we value you and we want to helpyou get back on your feet.
And the accommodation you've mentioned atthe moment is just your primary
(36:55):
accommodation.
You've got more sort of move onaccommodation.
as well around and about, haven't you?
So obviously, as people, so thataccommodation in the hotel, we staff it 24
seven.
And the idea is that we help people whoneed support all the time.
So it's available there.
If they feel down at three o 'clock in themorning, there's somebody to talk to, and
(37:19):
so on.
And it's a very protected environment aswell.
We have a courtyard, we have nice gates,we can provide them with a safe, very
safe, secure environment that's lovely tobe in.
But obviously we want people to get backinto the community.
And I'll have to tell you about the nameferry project a bit later and explain why
we called it the ferry project.
But within that then, we then have workedwith housing association partners and
(37:45):
they've rented us property and we nowmanage those properties and provide the
support property.
But we put people there and their flatsand their normal accommodation that people
would see around the town.
And the individual can live in there.
And we can give them what's calledfloating support.
We go and visit them.
We have telephone calls with them, checkeverything's okay.
If they need any help, if there's a letterthat they don't know how to respond to, if
(38:09):
they're having difficulty with neighbors,if whatever the scenario is, our staff
will get involved and we support them overthose challenges.
And if they start getting into bad habits,we can challenge.
Cause one of the things that we need to dois we act as a mirror.
If people are behaving in a way that, and.
that's inappropriate and they say to us,of course I'm not doing whatever it is.
(38:32):
We can say, well, actually we've seen youdo this and we're not, we're not rejecting
you, but we're just letting you know.
You can't say, you can't say you're notdrinking if we've seen that you come home
drunk.
You can't say that you're not swearing atpeople or being aggressive if we've seen
you swearing at people or beingaggressive.
We can't say that you're not, I'm notdepressed when actually we know you've not
(38:55):
come out of your room for four days.
and you've isolated yourself totally.
So we can act as a mirror and we can sayto people, look, we need you, we want to
support you here, how can we help and soon.
So we have that accommodation and evendown to with more recently managed to get
six modular homes built.
(39:16):
So for those people who really struggle ina community environment where our hostel
is obviously a common all living spaces,lots of people living together.
So for individuals who struggle in thatenvironment, we've been able to put them
into what are like 22 foot long caravans,but they're actually built, you know,
proper built houses and they have theirown lounge and bedroom and stuff.
(39:38):
And where it's appropriate for people tobe in that scenario, we can now put people
into that environment and provide supportin that.
So the aim is to try and personalize theaccommodation that we can offer, depend
upon the needs of the individual andreally think that through carefully, both
with them and ourselves.
So yeah, it's quite comprehensive.
So at the moment, as I say, it's about 84pieces of accommodation and some of the
(40:03):
housing associations that we work withnow, employers to actually go into their
property with their own tenants and workwith some of those to help them maintain
their tenancies and not to fall intoproblems.
So we're trying to provide the support andindeed we now work in other towns in
Finland.
So there's Whist Beach, but we also workin the
(40:24):
town of March, which is next to it.
And then the town of Whittlesey, which isanother one in the area.
So we're starting to provide services intothose towns as well.
Really good.
So where did the name, the ferry projectcome from then?
Okay.
So, so let's go back again then to when wewere in the property that where the family
(40:50):
had moved out.
and we were looking at our name and so on.
We were, at the time, one of theproperties that we were looking,
considering buying, what had been a pubthat was in West Beach and the pub was
called the Ferry Inn.
And it had a big bar on the ground floorand then it had, I don't know, five or six
(41:12):
bedrooms upstairs.
And we type of imagined that maybe we diddeliver some services out to the ground
floor and used the five or six roomsupstairs as the...
as the accommodation for the homelesspeople.
But unfortunately somebody beat us to itand they bought it and yeah, and off it
went.
But the name, the ferry inn, stuck withus.
(41:33):
And indeed, when we registered the charityin May, 99, we realized that the concept
of the ferry suited what we were planningvery well.
So a ferry, if we go back to the nineties,there was no tunnel, there was no tunnel.
So if you wanted to get from England tothe continent,
you had to get on a ferry and if youwanted to take your car.
(41:56):
So when you get on to a ferry, you mightbe totally independent before you get on.
When you get on to the ferry, the ferryprovides everything you need.
So there's a cafe on there, there'sadvice, if necessary there's a bedroom and
stuff like this.
There's doctors and all sorts of things.
And when you get to France itself, you canget off the ferry.
(42:21):
and you become totally independent again.
So what happens is you go from a place youdon't want to be to a place that you do
want to be.
And while you're in that process, you'rebeing carried by the ferry and given the
services and the support you need to getyou to the place you want to go.
So for us, that was a perfect image ofwhat we were trying to do.
(42:41):
What we weren't trying to do was take overpeople's lives and accumulate vast numbers
of people who would be on our
lists and so on.
What we were looking to do was providethis support for this period of time to
help people move from somewhere where theydon't want to be homeless to a place where
they do want to be housed and support themon the way.
(43:03):
And over the 25 years then, how manypeople have you managed to carry from one
side of the river to the other on yourferry?
Okay, so...
We've obviously done a count recentlybecause of the anniversary.
And what we've found then is we've got, wecan actually demonstrate we supported over
(43:26):
three and a half thousand people now in apopulation of, as I say, just over 30
,000.
So it's quite a significant part of thetown has been supported one way or another
over the years.
And indeed, I haven't gone, another aspectof the work we're doing is we're now got
involved in preventative agenda stuff.
We've tried to,
We're trying to help people not gethomeless.
(43:48):
So part of that is we've, we now run acommunity center called the Queen Mary
Center and have been doing so for the last10 years.
And in that center, then we provided abase for community groups of different
sorts to operate from.
So the Citizens Advice Bureau is based inour community center and we have
counseling services and physiotherapistsand the, the diabetes psych clinic's base
(44:14):
there.
We also have,
the classic things that go on in communitycentres like Zumba classes and we have
singing and people, you know, there'schoir that meets there and theatre
productions and people have parties andall sorts of things.
And to give you an idea of that, so overhalf a million visits have been had to the
(44:34):
community centre in the 10 years thatwe've been running that.
So we've supported that.
And we've also done work helping peopleget employment.
And over the time,
Over time we've been doing that work,we've supported over a thousand people and
now we don't have an accurate record ofhow many people got jobs because some
people don't tell us.
But we supported over a thousand people intrying to find work through all sorts of
(44:57):
different techniques.
We know that hundreds of those individualsare now employed as a result of the
support they've got.
So yes, when we start to look at it,there's been quite a lot of influence.
And let me just say, so going back to theday when I said to God, I can't do this by
(45:17):
myself.
Since then, we've had so many partners, somany people who've helped, so many people
who supported and, you know, we can talkabout that as well.
But when, if we look, yeah, some peoplejust like to hear about the finances.
If we look at the money, so...
(45:38):
That two and a half thousand pounds thatwas raised by the church back in 1999.
So now our turnover is just over twomillion, it's about 2 .2 million a year.
And I've done a calculation and we'veearned because we're, although we're a
registered charity, we operate as a socialenterprise.
(45:59):
We earn all the vast majority of our ownmoney.
Last year we earned 99 % of our own money.
So if we look at that,
Then we now had an organisation over £30million of income which we've used to
support homeless people.
And that's all been done through ourcharity.
(46:20):
So the local authority hasn't had toprovide all that support.
We've done all that.
And as a result of that, we've seen lotsof people's lives change.
That's excellent.
Thank you, Keith.
Thank you for chatting with me today.
I look forward to having more discussionswith you in future episodes of the Rural
(46:43):
Homelessness podcast.
But for today, thank you so much for beingwith us.
Yeah, thanks for the time, Matt.
And thank you as well for listening to theRural Homelessness podcast.
This podcast is going to come out twice amonth on the 1st and the 15th.
of every month.
So if you haven't already clicked thatsubscribe button, do that and remember to
come checking back again on the 1st or the15th and there'll be another episode
(47:07):
waiting for you as we discuss more topicsand issues around rural homelessness.
Thank you for your company today and Ilook forward to seeing you soon on another
episode.
Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you for listening to the RuralHomelessness Podcast.
Brought to you
by The Ferry Project.
(47:28):
Visit our website on www .ferryproject.org .uk.
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