THE first thing that happens when a woman arrives at the Simon Community Scotland women’s service is that she is taken to her room and given a welcome pack including pyjamas, toiletries and clean underpants.

Talk to the residents at the centre in Govanhill, Glasgow and it’s a comforting detail all of them, wherever they came from – an abusive home, the streets, a friend’s sofa, an exploitative relationship – warmly recall. Often, after all, they would arrive with nothing. They would be on their last legs. Some describe how when they first pitched up they were “broken”or “dying”.

Karyn McCabe, is the operations manager, who runs this and other Glasgow Simon Community services. Her first job with the homeless was working at a hostel for 200 men, so she knows male as well as female services. One difference between the genders, she notes, is that men tend to access services quicker than women. “I think there’s a stigma with women and it’s shame, guilt, that whole expectancy that you’re meant to cope,” is how she puts it.

“Women are very vulnerable,” she observes, “particularly when they’re out on the street: to sexual exploitation, to resorting to going to stay with somebody in somebody’s flat that’s frequented by other men, to the risk of being sexually abused and raped.”

A number of factors are statistically linked together with homelessness among women – poor mental health, domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, prostitution and addiction.

“What came first the homelessness, the mental health, the addiction?” she questions. “I think it’s way beyond that. Most of the women here probably had quite bad experiences as a child. Often you find they first experienced homelessness at around 16 years old, when they left home to live with a friend. Actually they probably left home due to abuse, or violence, or some sort of really negative experience at home. A lot of that can be trauma based. A lot of times addiction comes in line with that, and with that poor mental health.”

Jeanann Webster, the warm and inspiring service manager at the centre, notes that all too often the women’s stories of how they ended up here, will start with, “Well, I met this man.”

What saddens Webster most is the absence of hope she sometimes sees in the eyes of the people that turn up at her door. “Society has this view of the woman who holds the world up. What if you’re not the woman who holds the world up? What if you’re the one who didn’t manage your tenancy, and your weans went somewhere else, and your boyfriend was less than kind to you, and you find your way to the Hamish Allan (homelessness service) doors?”

Her approach is to treat them as people and equals.

All too often what’s forgotten, as these women are processed through the system as “single homeless women”, is that they have families, children who have often been taken into care. Mostly they are aged between 30 and 55 years old. As McCabe puts it: “They’ve got a family sitting somewhere hoping that one day they’re going to come and get them. But with housing they’ll only get what’s available as a single person.”

Generally, around two thirds of the women who stay at the Govanhill service, at any time, are being supported with a mental health problem, including anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder and extreme psychosis. All too often these women have experienced being put into temporary furnished flats, where they have been isolated, or B&Bs where there is no support. But isolation is one of the worst things for them. Often it leads to further homelessness or abuse. As McCabe observes: “Often women would abandon the tenancy and go into a negative relationship just for company. It’s just to connect to somebody.”

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Cara

“I felt safe when I came in here. I’d never felt safe like that before. Where I was staying at before, my house got broken into. My whole world went in one night. I came in here with a jacket, no nothing. I had recently escaped my partner, years and years of abuse, and was staying in that temporary flat. He had done a lot of bad things to me, to my body. Once he cut me right up my leg. He burnt my legs with cigarettes and said, ‘You’ll no be going out in your wee hotpants now.’

I was with him 20 years. My mum said to me years ago, ‘He’s got you there in a wee bubble.’ He cooked, he cleaned, he did the washing, he went and done the shopping. He did everything. He wouldn’t let me do them. I’m partially sighted you see.

From when I came into this place, though, I didn’t want to leave. I’ll be clinging onto the bricks when they knock the place down I’m sure. When we come in here we’re broke. We’re dead inside. Then the staff here bring us out and bring us out, and it works.”

Katie

“I was with my partner for six years and he was very abusive, but it was only when he was on the drink that he hit me. See the mind games he would play were terrible, mental torture. He would belittle me a lot, and in front of people. That was his moment to bring me down.

We were staying in his sister’s house and I’d had enough of him and his sister, the two of them ganging up on me. I just walked out. When I came in here, I really did look like I was dying. I was ill. I was taking drugs, cocaine, and not eating properly and just exhausted,.

But this place for me has been amazing. It’s brought me up. I’ve got off the cocaine. I’ve got my own wee place and I’m surrounded by people who care. We help each other out. I’m feeling healthier– eating, staying off drugs.

I’ve got kids – a 22 year old, an 18 year old and 11 and nine. My two oldest, they’re away doing their own thing, but my two youngest are in care. I need to do it in steps and then I’ll eventually get to see them.

I’ve got depression. You can go through days when you’re happy and then all of a sudden it just hits you. The other day I was just sitting in the room greeting. Didn’t know what I was greeting for. I think it was not having my own house and everything.

Personally, I think if I’d not come here I’d have probably been dead. I’d have killed myself with drugs. I saw no other way out. I thought I’ve no' got my own house or my weans. It was self pity in a way. I was using drugs to cope with that. I would probably have killed myself with drugs if I hadn’t come here."

Debi

“I lost my flat in May and I was rough-sleeping for about a week and a half, just in Glasgow city centre. I couldn’t believe I was there, on the streets, that first night. I was saying to myself. ‘You can’t sleep in the street. You can’t do this.’ But if there’s nowhere for you, what do you do?

The rough-sleeping was scary because I was on my own. Other people hang with the guys but I wasn’t. One eye open, one eye shut. I was waking up with big puffy eyes every time I woke up. You’re sleeping in the cold and waking up in the cold. When you wake up you can’t get up, it’s like you’re stuck to the ground because your body is a dead weight.

Folk couldn’t grasp that I was homeless, folk thought that I was an undercover police. When I was looking for drugs, they said, “You don’t look as if you take drugs.”

Eventually the council got me a bed and breakfast up at the West End. I’d been there five weeks when I got taken into hospital with my leg. I had a punctured artery – because of drugs – that burst last September. When I came out they told me they had somewhere in Govan for me, a bed and breakfast. That was a pure dive. At places like that there is also no support plan or nothing. And there are people there with mental health problems, addiction problems. It made my drug problem worse.

My one problem now is that I’m not getting my benefits and I’ve not got any money to go anywhere. I’ve got four children. I was just starting to see my wee six year old girl, and now I’ve no money to get there. She’s with my dad.

It was four years ago this July, me and the two kids’ dad split up. We split up because of domestic violence. I’d been with him since when I was 21 years old, seventeen years. He punched the life right out of me, so I fled.

The worst thing is not having my benefits. And there are things that lassies do that they wouldn’t usually do when they’re desperate – shoplift, prostitution. When you’re homeless people say, 'oh you can get money this way, money that way'. I’ve never shoplifted, never prostituted, but it’s not something I can say I would never do."

Marie

"I’ve got five kids: twelve, four, three, two and one years old, and they’re all in care right now. I did cope till a certain point, till I had my son, who is two years old and then I went into severe depression. I was taking panic attacks and just basically couldn’t sleep. With me being pregnant the stress was just piling on. It was overwhelming.

When my kids got taken into care my depression got even worse. I decided to pack myself up and leave my flat. I went to stay with my brother for a while, my mum’s and finally my dad’s. But me and him basically had a big massive argument and he kicked me out, so I was homeless with nowhere to go.

I felt really hurt by that. I felt I couldn’t have done that to my own kids – thrown them out. That’s what hurt me the most. Because I thought why are you doing this to me? I’m supposed to be the daughter, why are you putting me out into the street?

I’ve been here just under six months. It’s home here now. My self-confidence was right down that day I walked in the door. But it’s been brilliant. Now I’m going to do a social care course, go to college, and hopefully I’ll get a wee job in the end. So I’ve gone from way down to up."