Kilmarnock experiences frequent incidents of anti-social behaviour. Retailers, shoppers, and those in authority are impacted. What we see in Kilmarnock town is affluence and poverty existing in parallel with a large majority of people looking the other way.

Our experience at East Ayrshire Churches Homeless (EACHa) affirms that among our most vulnerable people in our community there is very little self-worth. Lives are lived with no purpose and no hope of life improving. There is a need to interrupt the continuing cycle and the sense of low aspiration and achievement which is the fate of so many born into disadvantage. Grinding poverty is tangible.

Transforming communities begins with the vision of a few people and others catching that vision to make things better. This requires good support around basic physical and mental health. People need the basics – a home, a source of income, and something to do. The needs of our most vulnerable in our community are no different from the needs of the rest of the population. And yet services struggle to deliver.

There are multiple configurations of services and resourcing and there is a stigma associated with the most vulnerable homeless and those with serious addictions. This impacts on services, the resources allocated to them, and how they work with other mainstream services including housing, employment, education, and training.