“I was always worried about safety because of the way I drank." - Kim's story
Kim had been rough sleeping for about five years after losing her house due to excessive drinking, trying her best to cope with past trauma and block out the world around her. Kim says “I was always worried about safety because of the way I drank. Sometimes I wouldn’t have a clue what was going on and that was really scary but that was all I knew”.
Despite engaging in HARP’s services and accessing the support at the Bradbury Day Centre, Kim continued to self-medicate through drinking, which meant she was not able to maintain her accommodation for longer than a month.
In 2020, Kim finally moved in to one of our properties where she met her key worker Katie.
Initially she found it hard to trust other people and did not want to change or become abstinent. Kim remembers how she felt when she was first offered accommodation.
“It was a huge weight lifted! It gave me that safe place”
After some extremely hard work and some emotional highs and lows, Kim worked with Katie and engaged with HARP partner agencies, eventually going to Rehab in February 2022.
“The turning point was a car accident I was in last year. My son turned around to me and said, ‘I nearly didn’t have a mum’, and that absolutely broke me. That’s when I realised how bad I was actually getting and that I needed to change.”
Now, thanks to the support she has received, which is only possible because of donations from people like you, Kim has turned her life around.
Kim is now 8 months sober and has relocated to a totally new area, where she is completing a college course in Health and Social Care. Kim wants to use her experiences to help others, and even volunteers at a local food bank.
Kim is also still in regular contact with her key worker Katie. “She’s been a massive help just putting up with me!
“I’ve got some good friends that I made through HARP, some that I still speak to. Sometimes it’s nice to talk to people going through the same thing as you.”
“HARP always gave me chance, they always took me back, never turned me away – they saw something in me”.
And Katie is just as glowing about Kim’s progress:
“Kim and I are still in contact, we call and text almost every week and I am so proud of Kim and what she has achieved. She is now the best version of herself and she worked so hard for that. She has a future now, one she never thought she would have. I wish there was a better word for it other than proud but I am proud of her, she deserves this chance.”
