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Why George the Poet almost moved me to tears

November 2021 saw the return of the Longford Lecture on prison reform. Spoken word artist George the Poet headlined as guest speaker, declaring ‘the game is rigged’ and calling for prisons to become ‘development centres’.

He began, however, with a message for the music industry. Longford scholar Kyle was in the audience….  

Hello, my name is Kyle and I am a third year scholar, currently completing a Mathematics degree. To be honest, I see myself as a numbers guy more than a crafter of words but after being moved almost to tears by George the Poet at the 19^th annual Longford lecture, I wanted to take a moment to put down my take on a memorable evening. And reflect on why his words meant so much to me.

This was my first Longford lecture. Amazing.

For a start, it was refreshing to see so many people who believe in change and rehabilitation gathering in Westminster from all different walks of life, many I suspect like my mum who came with me, may have been hearing George Mpanga (the Cambridge University- educated spoken word artist and social commentator famous for the Have you heard George’s podcast) for the first time.

The 500 or so people were gathering after a two year break due to Covid-19 with a common purpose of rehabilitation, with a shared belief in second chances. As someone who spent time inside myself, knowing the event was being aired into cells nationwide sent a powerful message, ‘you may be out of sight, but you are very much in mind.’

So what did I make of George on the night?

George, as I know from following him for many years, has passionate views about what happens in our prisons, about the urgent need for reform and rehabilitation. He’d hinted at what he was going to say in an in-depth interview in the Observer newspaper but nothing prepares you for the mesmerising in-person performance (which you can watch again here).

‘RAP’S NOT MUSIC!’ he declared.

He’d begun with a sentence which smoothly blended into a rap and then I realised: he’s rapping, this is a poem!

The first quote which struck me was,

‘Rap is a commodity, got to be the best thing adapted by poverty.

So if so many have seen a pay-out, why aren’t the communities guaranteed a way out?’ from his 2015 poem Rap’s Not Music.

When I talked to my mum afterwards I realised she, may be like others in the audience, may have been in the dark about what George was trying to get across.

It boils down to this. Often in RAP music artists talk about their upbringing, a common reality of drugs, struggles, violence, no support. Prison and trauma are part of their everyday reality and reflect the environment they grew up in.

I agree with what George says about commodity, he articulates a worrying distortion. RAP music is from a minority, typically born of poverty ‘on the streets’ but attracts the majority. These minority issues aren’t usually addressed or spoken about.  So, it’s powerful when people voice their situation and problems through the art of music.

But homegrown RAP music is BIG business, with the biggest market share of streamed music in the United Kingdom. It’s frustrating people are listening but not understanding the symptoms of poverty.

A quick side note here. I can relate to George and his background. He went to a London boys’ grammar school where he felt out of place, travelling for more than an hour each way to a leafy suburb from his home area, a poor part of London.  I remember being the only black person in my year 7 top set maths and science class at school, I’ve always been academic. It felt odd, no-one wanted to sit next to me.

May be it was because my friends were getting into trouble, some were bullies. Or may be due to race, upbringing or behaviour. I don’t know exactly. It’s hard to describe the feeling but I knew I was different from everyone in my class.

George knows what it feels like not to fit in. We need to stop people becoming lost in system.

Let’s remember the ‘The game is rigged‘ says George…’Crime and Imprisonment are predictable.’

• 54% of young people in prison have been in care
• 52% of children in police custody are from British Asian or Minority Ethnic backgrounds

Can you imagine the trauma of being in care? This trauma will often lead people to commit crimes. Whilst poorer communities struggle in self destruction, music companies are making big money, profiting from poverty.

Surely, there’s a moral duty on the music industry to make a change, to reinvest and address the community problems which sell their music.

This is such a central point I wanted to be sure my Mum had understood.

He also had important things to say about education and prisons. Back to statistics, he quoted the 34% of adult prisoners who read English below the level expected of an 11-year-old. Prisons need to change from punishment centres to development centres, a vision which most of us share.

Prison should be about second chances and changing people lives, for the better, for our communities and for a positive rehabilitation, breaking the cycle and reinvesting into our futures.

‘There are no choices without chances.’ That’s the bottom line.

Again, we need to stop people becoming lost in the system. I was that boy, like George the Poet. who didn’t quite fit in anywhere, not in school nor in my home area. I feel more that I do now. It has taken many years for me to feel accepted – a long journey with a lot of mistakes on the way.

Since my release from prison I’ve grabbed a lifeline, one where I’m pulling myself back into society, on the right side of the law.

I will be forever thankful and remember the likes of George the Poet for his inspiring words and work.

You can watch a recording of George the Poet’s speech by clicking on the link here. 

Prison doesn’t work. But prison education does.

Better prison education means less reoffending, less crime, and less cost to society.  Our Director Peter Stanford makes a fresh plea for the virtuous circle of education in prisons.  

Current projections are that the number of prisoners in our jails will rise by 2026 from the current 78,000 to 100,000 – a huge increase when we already have the largest percentage behind bars per head of population anywhere in western Europe.  To accommodate such an expansion, the government has set aside £4 billion to build more prison places to cope with the consequences of its own policies of tougher sentences.

There remains in Westminster and Whitehall an abiding belief that prison deters both offending and reoffending. The facts suggest otherwise. In many categories crime is now on the rise, despite the repeated ramping up of sentencing guidelines. Meanwhile just short of 50 per cent of current prisoners will be convicted again within 12 months of release – more in the younger age groups.

Such a list of statistics, I know, is too often a prompt for readers to look away. For decades the prison reform lobby has strained every sinew to highlight such figures to create a public mood to tackle what by any standards feels like a pretty poor return for the £44,640 per year that it costs to keep each prisoner behind bars in England and Wales.

But for all their efforts, and the evidence they provide, as a society we remain emotionally addicted to the comforting old mantra that “prison works”, coined by Michael Howard while Home Secretary in the 1990s.

My own tiny part in this debate is around prison education.  For the past 20 years on a part-time basis I have worked with a trust, set up in memory of the late Lord Longford, that provides scholarships of money and mentoring to encourage young serving and ex-prisoners to go to university.

Numbers helped are small: around 500 scholarships handed out over the period, currently at the rate of between 30 and 40 each year. But our results, I would suggest, provide a practical and human glimmer of hope.

Just short of 85 per cent of those we support go on to graduate and use their degree to begin careers that mean they never offend again. Fewer than 4 per cent return to prison.

My day job is as a journalist and writer – so I could now give you countless uplifting and inspiring stories of those young men and women we have supported and how they are now thriving members of their communities.  But in the limited space I have to argue for a new direction in prisons policy and public attitudes to what goes on in our jails, I’d like to focus not on anecdotes (check out our website for these), but on facts.

Research shows that, among those in prison who engage with education, reoffending rates on release are closer to a third than the more general 50 per cent.  In other words, “prison education works”.

That is the argument I have been making in recent years to various official enquiries, including in 2016, as a panel member on Dame Sally Coates report on prison education, commissioned by Michael Gove when Justice Secretary.

I was there at its publication launch, on the other side of Parliament Square from the Palace of Westminster, when the man who remains a senior Cabinet minister accepted the findings with words Nicholas Parsons had made famous – “without hesitation, deviation or repetition”.

Since when, very little has happened to enact even the most basic of the reports’ recommendations:

• That education be given a higher priority in prisons because we know it changes outcomes;
• That every prisoner have a personal education plan (just as every learner in school does) as part of their sentence planning that carries some force and travels with them from jail to jail;
• And that prison education provision continues to be inspected by Ofsted, but when it is judged to be inadequate or failing, something changes as result. At the moment, prisons can rack up half a dozen damning Ofsted verdicts and carry on as before. Just imagine if a school failed its Ofsted five times in a row and there were no consequences. Or if the prison inspectorate judged the prison hopeless at security.

The problem with the lack of follow-through since the Coates report, I must stress, is not simply money. The panel very carefully came up with a core set of recommendations that could happen within the existing tight prison education budget. The reason there has been no progress, I believe, is lack of interest.  Ministers calculate that there are few votes to be won by doing prison better. What electoral benefit there is, they believe, comes with doing prison more.

Hence the planned prison building spree.  The scheme hardly counts as leadership in the face of the challenge of reoffending by released prisoners that the Ministry of Justice’s own figures say costs to society and tax payer £18.1 billion. If you start making education more effective in prison, you will have less reoffending, less crime, and less cost to society. That is the virtuous circle.

Indeed, there could hardly be a better place to be investing resources in education than a prison.  Almost two thirds of prisoners have the literary skills of an 11-year-old – four times the level in general society. Some 42 per cent have been expelled or excluded from school, as against just one per cent of the total school population in England. So many young men and women, when they find themselves behind bars, have a light-bulb moment. They realise the opportunity school offered them for a better life, how they spurned it, and are now desperate for a second chance.

So where in particular should any new investment go? Two suggestions-

First, into a better-trained, better-paid, and better-equipped cohort of education staff in prisons, up to and including the equivalent of a Teach First scheme to bring new energy to a group that is too often at the bottom of prison officialdom’s rigid hierarchies.

And second, a rule change to allow limited and supervised access to the internet for studying for those prisoners who have demonstrated real commitment to education as a means of changing their lives.

The argument against such a change from the prison service (which instead has invested millions in the Virtual Campus, an internal intra-net system, closed off from the internet, that prison learners hardly use such are its inadequacies) is that any digital concessions will be used by prisoners to stalk victims or control criminal networks.

They may be right in some cases, but under suitable supervision, and if treated as a privilege to be earned which will be lost if misused, there are plenty of technical fixes to ensure such pitfalls could be avoided.

The need for such a reform has been made even more urgent by the pandemic, which has created a boom in digital education courses at all levels. As it stands, prison learners can have no access to them. So much potential is going to waste as a result. All those hours stuck in their cell with nothing to occupy them when they could be studying and getting qualifications.

The most compelling argument, though, is that, taken together, these two reforms would require a fraction of the budget set aside for building more prison places.  And the facts tell us they would deliver much better results. For us all.

This article was first published on Conservative Home. All figures used come from the winter 2021 edition of the Bromley Briefing, produced by the Prison Reform Trust

“You Alright, Mate?” 

Introducing Chris. Chris is a new Class of 2021 Longford scholar who starts university this Autumn.

Here he explores the unwritten rules of prison, and post-prison, encounters….

When we used to pass each other in prison, whether inside or out, in browbeating heat and in rain that wriggles up your sleeves, you would say, “You alright, mate?” And I wondered if you really meant it. Were you just saying, “I acknowledge your existence,” which is, I suppose, still meritable in its own way, or did you really, genuinely care?

If I had said, “No, I’m not alright,” (which I often was not), would you have frozen mid-step, concerned and aghast at my change of answer? Would you have invited me over for tea and sat me down for a chat? Would you have listened to me worry about where I was going to live or fret about getting into University? What if I admitted I’d missed my brother’s wedding and that my partner was leaving me? Would you have told me it would be alright? Hugged me? Got me put me on an ACCT**?

If the answer to all of these is “No”, then I would rather you hadn’t acknowledged me at all.

Twice in one week when someone asked the question I said “Yes, I’m alright,” and they replied “Yeah, I’m good thanks,” which really underlined to me how meaningless the whole interaction was.

Some people didn’t say anything to me when we passed; not even a, “You alright, mate?” and I’m not sure if I resent them or admire their courage for breaking the mould. Other people didn’t used to say it but then they started to – like the guy I helped get a new mattress, or the man whose Comp 1** I wrote. Which led me to believe there might just have been some sentiment buried within it.

I often thought after our exchange about how many we might have left in us before one of us was released.

Neither of us knew we were saying goodbye by saying “You alright, mate?” but one day I doubt either of us remember, we did- and you were gone like yesterday’s bread.

I thought our performance well-rehearsed. But when I see you in Epping Forest we silently, mutually, telepathically decide to improvise. You are taller, your hair less wavy, and missing the roll-up that lived behind your ear but it is you. Our eyes lock and our hands come together as if that is how we always greet each other and this time I say it, “You alright, mate?”

I’m acutely aware of those around me. My brother and his wife, her sisters and brother, her sister’s boyfriend, his wife and their four kids – I’d never met most of them until today. I wonder if you and I will bravely attempt a longer conversation; if I can introduce you to them and say, “This is a man I have never told you about but here he is. The extent of our relationship is that we used to ask each other if we were alright up to three times a day without ever meaning it for more than a year.”

You say, “Where do I know you from?”

It strikes me as an odd question when we are already shaking hands.

“You were in Ford,” I reply, pointedly leaving out the ‘HMP’ in case your companion isn’t aware.

“Yes,” you say, “What’s your name?”

“Chris,” I say. “My name is Chris.”

We freeze there, like two dancers unsure of who is supposed to lead. My tongue caresses my bottom lip as I begin to form a word. I want to tell you about all that has changed: that I have a job, a girlfriend, somewhere to live, a scholarship to University; that it all has turned out better than I could have hoped – but I think how pompous I’ll sound and the words die with a breath on my lips.

“Who’s this?” My niece says, cutting through the tension in the way that only a child can.

“My…friend,” I say, hoping you won’t object.

“And these are your…?” you say.

“My family. This is my family.”

And that feels strange yet correct for me to say, like a stiff new shoe that fits just right.

I feel the moment slipping away and move to end it.

“Alright,” I say, “Good to see you. You take care.”

“Alright,” you say.

And we’re away: two boats shunted off the docks; two birds taking wing; two prisoners, free.

—————-

** Assessment, Care in Custody and Teamwork, or ACCT, is the official term for suicide watch

** Prison complaint form

Chris is studying a law degree with a Patrick Pakenham Award.

The friendship of books

The books which got me through.

Here for Longford Blog ex-scholar Dempsey shares his reading list of inspirational books which helped him to survive prison and remain ‘friends’ to this day.

Since books are about stories, let me first of all, briefly, tell you about me. Briefly I promise! I went to prison at 18 and came out at 57. Almost four decades behind prison walls.  Books truly were my salvation and inspiration during those years of imprisonment.

In darker moments, as I moved through the ages of man, the stories and the people in them offered not only company, but self-education and ultimately rehabilitation.

Perhaps this may be something others who’ve turned to books for for solace and escapism in the pandemic will recognise.

After my release in 2017 I was lucky enough to continue studying literature in an academic setting, thanks to the Longford Trust. So I want to share some observations of three pivotal books that stay forever with me. I hope what I have to say will strike a chord as much for those who have never stepped inside a prison as those who have been incarcerated.

One of the most influential books I read is an adventure upon the high seas titled Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Moby-Dick is a big, adventurous book that explores themes as profound as evil, religion, destiny, insanity, and race.  The themes are considered and examined through the eyes of Ishmael, a young man who decides to see a bit of the world by joining a whaling expedition.  Captain Ahab leads the search for a white sperm whale who bit off his leg and it is here, in Ahab’s monomaniacal desire to have his day with Moby-Dick, that the story gives rise to its major themes.  Ishmael views his time spent aboard the Pequod whaling ship as an education comparable to a tenure at Harvard or Yale, and his education grows during various incidents such as when he finds himself below deck staring into the ship’s tryworks, and after almost losing control of the ship he’s supposed to be above deck steering, Ishmael reflects: “…do not give thyself up to fire, least it invert thee, deaden thee, as for a time it did me…”   And how many times in our lives have we all, in some form or manner, become undermined by staring too long into the blast furnace of existence.

Another book I found that lessened the sting of incarceration is a classic story of adventure and misadventure that was written—perhaps by feather and ink—in 1605 by Miguel de Cervantes and famously known simply as Don Quixote.

Prison life is nothing if not tedious. Boredom is the surest companion to anyone inside. I longed for adventure, a chance to break free from my ball and chain and get out and do something, anything other than what I typically did from one dull day to the next.  I therefore found plenty of adventure and excitement through reading this book, here, in my opinion, is why.

The known world of routine corruption and commonplace disruption is what Don Quixote seeks to escape by immersing himself in books of knights in shining armour, blue moon romances and a deluxe edition of grand illusions.  With most of his mind stuck in the last book, or most of the last book stuck in his mind, Don Quixote summons his loyal servant and true friend, Sancho Panza, to accompany him on a horseback adventure across the badlands of La Mancha, Spain in search of good times, good vibrations, and goodness knows what else.  In the stratosphere of classic world literature, Don Quixote is the ultimate tale of adventure. The fact is that happiness—as we instinctively know and sometimes forget—is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.  With long reins in one hand and longer sword in the other, Don Quixote strides tall in the cowhide saddle of his bull-headed imagination to do battle with windmills and sheep and Little Bo Peep.  Sancho Panza tries to reason with the befuddled Don Quixote but to no avail.  The man of La Mancha is large and in charge.  He is, at bottom, the man of La Mancha and a man who will inspire you to straddle your horse and set your sights on grand adventure before sorrowful dementia.

I guess that for someone who has been behind walls for more than half my life, I could dare to say I’m qualified to comment on prison literature.

Of the huge number of books on prison life, fiction and nonfiction, Stephen King has to be the author who gets it most right.

Rising from the fertile imagination of Stephen King are daylight demons that twist and turn into midnight monsters who slip, slide, peep, and creep knee deep through the mist and moonbeams of your troubled dreams.  Primarily a master writer of things that thump before they bump in the night, King is just as skilful in transcending the horror genre to create ordinary stories which give way to extraordinary circumstances.  Hence Different Seasons.  A quartet of novellas as varied in tone, temperature and feel as the four seasons to which their titles correspond.

Although each tale carries the weight and disturbance of a tombstone, one story in particular rises above the others to carry the weight and resonance of thunder.  “Hope Springs Eternal: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption” is a 1940s rough-side-of-the-mountain story of the penitentiary and its brutal personalities, brutal intentions, and brutal injustices.  Longing, hope and perseverance flow through the tale as resoundingly as the midnight rumble of a distant freight train throughout moonlit cell blocks and mingling with dreams and recollections and memories of a better day, better time, better place.

“Shawshank Redemption” is memorable because at its core it is a love story.  Not sexualized romantic love, which is as fleeting and fragile as faithfulness, but genuine love which is genuine friendship, love without wings.  Two prisoners forge a perfect friendship in an imperfect place that allows each to see themselves and one another through days of desperation seemingly without end.  A genuine friendship is what lends this story a rainbow elegance while providing a subtle reminder that you can count yourself lucky if you find and keep one good friend in this world.

Prison is many things, lonely and boring among them.

Yet books became my true friends throughout my imprisonment and here in my post-prison life, still are.

A virtual internship: three months flew past

My time as an intern at the Criminal Justice Alliance by Jason Grant

It is a Friday afternoon on the last day of my internship with the Criminal Justice Alliance (CJA). I have just finished a Zoom call with Director Nina Champion and Sarah, a new recruit and member of an expert group who use their experience and expertise to inform the CJA’s work to create a fair and effective criminal justice system. I can honestly say that my knowledge, skills and experience have been put to good use over the past three months and I am glad to have made the connection through the Longford Trust.

To rewind a little…

It all started back in March 2020, when COVID-19 was making its way through Europe and all my freelance work as a public speaker and trainer was being postponed or cancelled. I was looking for an opportunity and heard about the three-month internship with the CJA – which, in case you aren’t familiar with their work, is a coalition of 160 organisations working together to create a fairer and more effective criminal justice system. I had met Nina at a criminal justice event a couple of years ago and decided I would put myself forward. To give you a bit of background about me, I am a former scholar, graduating in 2016 with a Criminology Masters from Glasgow University and am now a trustee with the Longford Trust. I felt well positioned to make the most of the opportunity.

Initially, I had some trepidation about starting an internship during a pandemic, with all work being done remotely. A week before full lockdown, I went to London to visit the office and have a conversation with Nina about what I would be doing. I left the meeting with a good sense of the organisation and felt that I would be in good hands.

How did I work – virtually?

From the first team meeting -via Microsoft Teams- I was made to feel very welcome, and I quickly became an integral member of the team. My usual working day would begin with a catch-up call with the team member I was working with to discuss the plan for the day. I would then spend the day conducting research and writing, interviewing people, reading through transcripts and writing up my thoughts and findings. It was a well-thought out plan and I felt supported from the start.

On Mondays, I worked with Jamie, the Communications and Engagement Officer, to help produce a briefing on what makes good criminal justice reporting. I interviewed journalists, academics and campaigners to explore how the media can cover criminal justice in a more sensitive and constructive way, and how it can improve public understanding of complex criminal justice issues. The briefing will be published ahead of the CJA Media Awards later this year.

On Wednesdays I worked with Amal, the Policy Officer, to help produce a report looking at whether restorative practice (which brings those harmed by crime or conflict and those responsible for the harm into communication to repair the harm and find a positive way forward) can disrupt what is often called the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’. In other words, whether this kind of communication can slow the depressing path from school exclusion to prison sentence.

It’s a complex subject. I did lots of reading to gain a full understanding of the issue, though I had some knowledge from previous work I’d done with The Forgiveness Project. I then found and interviewed restorative practitioners working all over the country in schools and people working in alternative education provision and youth offending settings. Everyone was very generous with their time. The report will form part of the CJA’s Responding Restoratively Series, following the first report, Responding Restoratively to COVID-19.

On Fridays, I worked with the CJA Director Nina to develop a proposal for a leadership programme for people who have personal experience of the justice system. The idea of the programme is to enable people with first-hand expertise to gain more influence in the criminal justice system and to progress into leadership positions. I was tasked with pulling together ideas, researching potential partners and speaking with inspiring ‘lived experience’ leaders from across the country. I even had to present my findings to members of the CJA’s Lived Experience Expert Group, who had been involved in CJA’s Change from Within report. They asked some tough questions for me to go away and consider!

Saving the best until last….

The highlight of my internship was a global virtual meeting with fantastic practitioners from across Africa, Europe, Oceania, South America, North America and the Caribbean, through a worldwide prison reform movement Incarceration Nations Network. I had the opportunity to meet a former participant of a leadership programme and her colleagues at Project Rebound, which supports people leaving prison to go to university. Being a trustee at the Longford Trust, and former Longford scholar, I was really interested to hear about all the support they offer to their students in California.

Some of my low points were due to technology. This included the recording of an interview becoming corrupt and unusable, I can still feel the sinking feeling. And my Wi-Fi dropping out midway through calls. I suspect I am not the only one who has experienced such mishaps during the pandemic!

All in all, I had a great and wide-ranging experience – the three months flew past. Like all good things, the internship has come to an end, but I look forward to future opportunities to help out and I’m glad the CJA has hired another Longford scholar to help with this year’s CJA Awards.

*

Postscript from the seaside:

A week later, the CJA team hopped on a train to visit me at the seaside, where I live. We walked along the pebbled beach in bright sunshine, eating fish and chips, getting to know each other better – face-to-face. It is quite surreal meeting people who you have only ever seen through a computer screen. Impressively we managed not to discuss work too much. I was very touched that the team came to visit me, and I wish the CJA and its members the best of luck for the future.

Life in Lockdown: Six Months On

Life in Lockdown: Six Months On

Last Summer our scholar Shaun wrote a blog which struck a chord and shocked in equal measure. Describing a cycle of prison, release and homelessness, he told of being given a tent to sleep in after one prison sentence.

Here Shaun, who is studying a distance learning degree, writes about his experience of lockdown…

In early March I was ready to start a new life. I was moving out of supported accommodation and had high hopes of getting a job to support my studies. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way…

A week after I moved into my new home, my plans were scuppered by the national lockdown. To say it was a massive blow to me is an understatement. An avid gym goer – as much for my mental well being as the physical benefits -overnight I lost something fundamental to my recovery from a serious and chaotic drinking problem. I didn’t do much in life apart from study and go to the gym. And my world was pretty solitary after cutting off negative people to better my life and create a better future for myself. To compound my isolation part-time work opportunities had fallen away.

Here I was, alone, locked off from the world.  Would I be able to cope?

I found myself getting quite low. Things were looking grim.

My old life was haunting me. The new block of flats I’d moved to were filled with people who were ignoring government advice. I witnessed people walking around like zombies scoring, taking drugs and drinking in the communal areas. As a former addict, it offered dangerous temptation.

Lockdown delivered another major personal blow. Contact with my mother ceased just as I was rebuilding a relationship with her.

Even my face-to-face contact with my mentor – we meet here and there – had fallen victim to Covid-19. We spoke via telephone and email, but it wasn’t the same as meeting up and talking in person.

I felt helpless – locked in. Able only to leave the house for essential items and no gym, it wasn’t long before I fell into drinking again. Every time I went shopping, I’d substitute a food item for alcohol. This soon escalated into a serious drinking pattern.

Suffice to say, lockdown played havoc with my life. Old styles of behaviour were creeping back. I felt myself falling deeper and deeper into a sea of depression and bad decision making. I felt like giving up on my degree.  Now, once again, I was allowing alcohol to get a hold of me. I couldn’t stay there. It was a one-way road to self-destruction if I did.

All hope seemed lost. I had to do something.

I had sought to escape supported accommodation for a long time. Now, alone, with what seemed like the world falling apart around me, I begged to go back. At times I would randomly burst into tears, although I’d never let anybody see me cry. Men don’t cry right? At least that’s what I’ve been taught. I felt weak.

It was in mid-May that I received a glimmer of hope.

I had a move date, June 3^rd.

Finally, I could see a way out of the mess I was in. I had come so far, now I’d gone back. I thought I was ready to live independently again, I was wrong. Perhaps had this whole Covid-19 thing not occurred, I may well have succeeded in my plan? Who knows? It’s impossible to say. Anyway, June 3^rd rolled around, and I moved back into supported accommodation. It was a massive relief.

Fast forward two months and a lot has changed for the better. Slowly, the pandemic restrictions are being relaxed. I am back at the gym, hooray!  Life in lockdown has affected us all in some form or other. I am very grateful that the Longford Trust never gave up on me and that my mentor continued to reach out to me.

Getting paid work continues to be tough. Instead, I am volunteering a few days a week with a local charity, Emmaus, something I can do alongside my studies. In the long run, this will also close the gap on my CV help my chances with future work. And I enjoy working with the charity. I give what I can in terms of time, but I receive so much more. I am building new relationships and forming a kind of social life, determined to break away from life as a recluse.

By the time you read this, you’ll realise, life in lockdown for me has been one hell of a roller-coaster ride. I have found hope again.

I hope that one day, I will be ready to live alone again, fully independent and able to deal with whatever life throws at me. It’s important to remember that we are never alone, even if it seems that way. We mustn’t be afraid to ask for help no matter what is going on around us.