July and August 2024

LGBT Sparkle is a friendship and social group for adults based in Wolverhampton. Their mission is to raise awareness and tackle issues faced by the LGBT+ community, and the group is open to anyone who would like to socialise and meet new people in a safe place. 

While gathering insights for our dementia strategy refresh, we spoke to one of the founders of LGBT Sparkle as he shared his experience of being the main carer for his nan. With the ICS dementia strategy now written, we reconnected with him to discuss the strategy, the impact of his feedback and to do some filming for one of our Feet on the Street features. 

He gave us an update on some of the struggles he is facing while caring for his nan, who lives independently. She has been leaving the windows on her ground floor apartment open overnight, which he believes is a safety concern. He asked the housing association about installing some window restrictors, but was told that they were against fire regulations. He thinks this policy should be reconsidered as it is not personalised to his nan’s needs and capabilities if there was a fire. He has organised for a police community support officer to visit his nan to see what can be done regarding the crime risk. 

He also shared his thoughts on giving someone power of attorney, as he is an advocate for having a power of attorney in place as soon as possible after receiving a dementia diagnosis. He thinks GPs and health professionals should provide more information on it due to how difficult it can be to get in place later down the line. As they left it too late to get it in place for his nan, he is now trying to raise funds for a solicitor.  

He was grateful that his views and experiences were considered for the ICS dementia strategy, and we have fed his insights and views from this conversation back into it. 

SUIT is a community interest company (CIC) organisation that supports people with drug and alcohol addictions. We have been working closely with SUIT on the health inequalities forum, which has a focus on homelessness. As part of the forum, we supported a gentleman who works at SUIT to share his story of homelessness, addiction, crime and the experiences he has had of services from across the Black Country ICS. 

He spoke very openly and honestly about his heroin addiction, explaining that he was an addict for over 20 years after leaving the army and becoming homeless. He said he didn’t know how to overcome his addiction or where to go for support, and that, while he was in and out of social or supported housing, he would repeatedly end up living on the street. He tried to fund his addiction by committing theft, which ultimately lead to prison and consequences that impacted part-time jobs and housing arrangements. He was very reflective on this time of his life, saying that he now volunteers full-time to support other people and to turn his past experiences into something positive. 

He has been clean for nearly two years and has been taking medication during this time to curb the heroin addiction. He will be spending two weeks in a rehabilitation centre at the end of his two years to be taken off the medication completely. 

While walking through Wolverhampton, he was approached three times by people experiencing homelessness who knew him and who SUIT were currently supporting. He said that people depend on SUIT for signposting as they are a trusted voice. He suggested that we and the local council should work more closely with SUIT to help make us more approachable and accessible to people who are homeless.   

Following this conversation, we have arranged a meeting with SUIT, the CEO of the Good Shepherd and the Black Country ICB’s head of transformation to explore how we will work together in future. The Good Shepherd expressed that they would like to create a video, and we are looking at the possibility of this being funded as a Feet on the Street feature for the next health inequalities forum on homelessness.