Pam's Story

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Two women walk through a doorway. The woman on the left has a Simon on the Streets hoodie on.
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Meeting Pam

Pam was sofa surfing at a friend’s house when she first met our outreach worker. Unfortunately, her friend was moving house and Pam was to become homeless once more.

Pam had always lived with her parents. When they both passed away, Pam was lonely. Pam’s partner at the time moved into her parent's house with her. Together, they decided to move to a new city and buy a new house with the money from the sale of her parent's house.

Facing Hate

Pam’s relationship with her partner was unfortunately full of ups and downs and they split up several times. This was not helped by the fact that in the new city they lived in they faced a lot of hatred due to both their sexuality and being transgender. People in their neighbourhood would make threats, complain about them and throw things at their windows. This caused a lot of stress for both Pam and her partner.  

After breaking up for the final time Pam’s partner left, but not before completely wrecking Pam’s home. Pam was scared and alone. She had not lived on her own before and didn’t know what to do. That’s when Pam began sofa surfing and we first met her, after Fusion Housing Huddersfield asked us if we could assist them with supporting Pam.

Support and advocacy

Our outreach worker began supporting Pam with attending housing options and going to appointments to discuss housing options. Pam was offered a flat in a busy building and neighbourhood. As there were many people around, Pam was fearful of receiving abuse again, and our outreach worker supported Pam to advocate for a property in a quieter area.

When Pam first moved our outreach worker helped Pam move her stuff in, showed her how to work the electric metre and where to top this up, where the nearest food shops and bus stops were and how to use the hob and microwave.

Living alone for the first time

We worked in partnership with Fusion Housing Huddersfield and Connect Housing, collaborating together to provide support to Pam during the huge transition of living alone for the first time. Our support has ranged from going for a coffee together to give Pam the time and space to talk and anything overwhelming her, to asking another outreach worker to come over and give her a manicure to lift her spirits.

Loneliness and isolation can occur when moving into a new place and we have provided information on local community groups. Pam has been attending one and made friends in the group which is great. Unfortunately, most of these groups are currently not running due to coronavirus but we still check in with Pam.  

We admire Pam’s growth and the huge steps she has taken to live independently.  

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