by Fran Cassidy

Bentley House is an award-winning project for the homeless. It is run by Crosscare in Dun Laoghaire, and from the outside it looks more like a marine hotel than a homeless service. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council and Crosscare won the 2007 Irish Council for Social Housing award for community housing for Bentley House, which opened in December 2006.

I met Jack Dunphy, Crosscare'”s programme manager for homeless services, and Ciara Moen, the project manager in Bentley House. The four-storey building, which nestles ‘cheek by jowl’ with a traditional terrace of two storey houses, is clearly well designed both inside and out.

As well as six emergency beds the building contains eleven shared self-contained apartments, with a total capacity of forty-two residents. Ciara credits architect Dr Eugene Gribbin for the “uplifting nature” of the building, and Jack with being the key for pushing for the quality of the interior and the apartments.

It’s certainly a long way from the night shelter on Tivoli Road, Crosscare”s initial ‘ground zero’ winter project for rough sleepers, which, despite offering the basics as well as it could, was severely hampered by the fact that it resembled “a container on the back of a lorry”.

Jack explains that there was a commitment from Dún Laoghaoire-Rathdown County Council (DLRCC) that Tivoli Road was a staging post on the way to this “wonderful permanent facility that allows Crosscare to develop the concept of homeless services and integrate a whole health and holistic needs programme based around peoples” multiple needs”.

“I think that this project has allowed us to experiment a bit. There were doubts in the sector as to whether you could mix emergency accommodation, those with high support needs and people trying to move on, in together. We decided to try it. To create an environment which is really respectful of people and to engage with them in a responsible way. A year on, there are many more positive outcomes than negative ones”.

Ciara points to one big change with the new building. “In Tivoli Road there used to be a lot of trouble because of peoples” frustration and the poor living environment, but now in this new service, the change in them has been enormous because they’re actually in a nice, bright, calm space.”

“Absolutely,” Jack agrees: “We set a standard here. We had interior designers create individual homely apartments of the same quality that you would want for yourself. It was a risk. There were the usual budgetary concerns, but Crosscare said go ahead and the Department of the Environment (DOEHLG) and DLRCC reimbursed us for the fit-out.

“The experience of living in an apartment and being treated well, has really paid off in terms of how people perceive themselves, their confidence, motivation and their ability to engage with programmes. The level of conflict, frustration and anger that people had around their life, living conditions and fragmented choices of services has now almost been eliminated.”

“It's very much about the way you treat people,” Ciara adds, “and I think people feel respected here. There is equality here and residents understand that and welcome it. They have no problem approaching staff about anything. We’re working towards developing a programme here, at the heart of which is respect for the individual” says Jack. “People have challenging behaviour, often largely informed by their experiences. Our approach is to try and get past the behavior to the person, and help them to unpack the reasons why their behavior is like this.”

“We”ve been very lucky in having a funding stream from the HSE that has allowed us to develop our Wellbeing Programme, which is an internal mental health focused programme.”

Ciara explains that the Wellbeing Programme started with one resident engaging with the visiting psychotherapist Paul Bradley who “used motivational interviewing and other techniques to deal with addiction, bereavement and other relevant issues.

“That resident benefited hugely and this encouraged us to develop the service further and make it more widely available. The feedback was extremely positive and now the psychotherapist is here full time and we now have also a nutritionist, homeopath and reflexologist. They deal with peoples” life experiences and also issues arising from being out of home. It also provides support to people who have been through the mental health services, and offer them a way of managing their day to day mental health in their own manageable way, as opposed to being completely reliant on medication or re-accessing services that they”ve had bad experiences with.”

“Some residents diagnosed with schizophrenia, bi-polar or other deliberately choose not to take their medication and we would have to respect that, so we are developing in-house training to understand and help people manage their mental health without medication if that is their wish,” explains Jack, “so that the person can be in more control of their illness and recognize triggers at an early stage and engage with it in a more controlled way, rather than reacting when the illness has developed into a crisis. So we have explored alternatives to working with people with mental health issues, and we are now in the process of developing a WRAP programme (Wellness Recovery Action Plan) which promotes all people to manage their mental health in a responsible and realistic way.”

Currently, Ciara tells me, Bentley House offers adult education and a strong social programme that is complementary to the Holistic Wellbeing Programme.

“We urge people to keep busy: there is a step up project here every day, which is a VEC programme including core social skills, literacy, cooking, computers, arts and crafts, photography etc. We also have a GP and a nurse that have an in-house weekly clinic, a weekly CWO clinic and a clinic with the local DLRCC outreach worker. The key workers assist residents in developing a care plan informed by the HNA and encourage working towards goals, outcomes and independent living. They also assist with budgeting and encouraging household duties.”

“Our rules are very low key. We”re high tolerance, low threshold and we don”t want to lose that. We do however ask that people in the emergency beds don”t bring in alcohol and that they come in by eleven.

We also have a strict drugs policy and we endeavour to maintain a drug free environment although we do recognize the need for properly equipped services for active drug users.”

“We don”t feel we have the support services in place for that,” Jack explains, “and we have got a duty of care to methadone users and people dealing with their addiction, to ensure that open drug use is not part of the service delivery.

Twenty people have successfully moved on from Bentley House in the last year, some to supported social housing, some to other transitional projects and some to private rented. But options are limited in the case of the latter.

While their experience is that the Rental Accommodation Scheme has improved things recently, Ciara points to the fact that the rent cap is disproportionately very low in comparison to the price of an average bed-sit as a major ongoing difficulty. This is exacerbated by the fact that demand for private rental accommodation in Dún Laoghaire outstrips supply.”

We are committed to challenging all these issues and promoting peoples rights to standards, quality and service. The key is providing opportunity and you can only provide opportunity by taking risks.”
Jack takes up the theme. “The standard of private rented accommodation is appalling for a lot of the people we work with, because the rent cap is so low that some landlords think they can give people accommodation that is totally substandard to live in. We”re saying that has to change. We have to change how we view people and the standards that we expect people to be living in.

“We make no apologies for setting a really high standard here. This is the new standard; it can”t be less than this. Isn”t that the challenge?”

(Edited from Cornerstone: The Magazine of the Homeless Agency, April 2008)

To contact Bentley House, call 01-284514.