AN ADVOCATE for vulnerable women, Lianne Kirkman, is to spend ten nights in a row sleeping rough, to spotlight issues of ladies’s safety and to boost money for a hub where women can meet, have access to support services, and develop recent skills for employability, alongside a substitute for custody.
Ms Kirkman will travel from Leamington to Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton, London, Doncaster, Hull, and Blackpool. Her journey will likely be filmed, and the film will likely be screened at an International Women’s Day conference on 7 March. She will meet local organisations and seek to boost awareness of the complex issues and existiing best practice, in addition to highlight gaps in service provision
A former nurse, she suffered a private breakdown that brought her to contemplate taking her own life in 2013, and led her to volunteer at Leamington Christian Mission. Since then, she has arrange the Helping Hands community project in Leamington, and launched the Esther Project, born out of the conviction that ladies usually are not best served in a mixed-gender environment.
This will likely be her tenth yr of sleeping rough to spotlight the problems, but the primary with multiple nights. “Every experience goes to be different,” she said on Tuesday. “But I do know that we’re going to be met with the identical issues around funding, around women not being secure, the results of trauma, and the cycles of abuse and poverty.”
She confesses that she hates sleeping out. “I comprehend it’s very unpleasant. It normally hits me around 3 or 4 a.m., and I feel absolutely dreadful,” she says. She has been aware of homelessness since her teens: her mother ran a shelter for homeless people in Scunthorpe, and he or she later worked in outreach in Birmingham and Wales.
An area skiing shop supplied her with cold-weather wear, including thermals, a mat, and a sleeping bag. “I don’t think I’ve ever been higher equipped,” she says. “I’ve done this in cold weather before. You can keep yourself warm through your layers, but in wind and rain, it’s horrible.”
