‘If Hawkspring is not saved, people will die’

“It’s just the instability,” says Lorraine Bush, at the Hartcliffe alcohol clinic which will lose touch with hundreds of vulnerable, and often chaotic, addicts when it shuts its doors. “They are the ones who need something stable in their lives at least, and they will have nowhere to turn.”

Lorraine, CEO at the charity, is speaking from her Peterson Square drop-in days after she went public with the announcement that Hawkspring will cease to exist come the end of August, due to lack of funding.

The closure has already struck a chord with campaigners, councillors and even local MP Karin Smyth, who has labelled its untimely demise a “failure of public health commissioning”. Meanwhile Mark Brain, the local Labour councillor has warned: “Let us be clear, if Hawkspring is not saved people will die.”

People like the 48-year-old man found in the road around the corner just two weeks ago with head injuries after a withdrawal-induced fit.

“He recently came in for an assessment,” Lorraine says, her voice beginning to shake. “The man just had no money. He had nowhere to live after he relapsed. He was sleeping on the floor of an old people’s home.

“His money ran dry and he couldn’t sustain his habit. The shock to his body gave him a heart attack. He hit his head as he collapsed in the street.”

It is a rare and shocking case – even for Lorraine, who has been working in alcohol addiction services in Hartcliffe for 12 years, two with Hawkspring.

Despite struggling to attract donors, Hawkspring has helped 900 people back onto their feet since it opened in 2013, saving “dozens” of lives in the process.

The clinic was a merger between Hawks and Kwads, which both lost out when a new commissioning model, Bristol Roads (Recovery Orientated Alcohol & Drugs Service), grouped together selected services under a council umbrella.

The new model meant services on the outside, like Hawkspring, have since struggled to survive – despite a rise in alcohol referrals in recent years.

Surviving on a shoestring budget from donations and grants, the service finally announced earlier this month that it would be closing at the end of August after a couple of crippling funding rejections from Children in Need and the National Lottery.

Although Bristol Drugs Project, part of Roads, also covers Hartcliffe with a mobile unit and a new office in Filwood, Lorraine fears that Hawkspring’s closure will have a damaging impact to an already delicate community.

“When you add Bristol together, sure it seems like a wealthy place,” she says. “But when you look at an area like this, you see one of the most deprived parts of Britain.”

Among the impacts of yet another service shutting its doors due to cuts, she says, is the added costs of healthcare when people relapse and end up in hospital and higher crime levels which soar when addicts get desperate for alcohol or drugs if there is nowhere to turn.

“You will even see pressure on prisons for the people which come to us saying they would rather commit a crime and get a roof over their head than be left penniless with their money going on alcohol,” she adds.

She echoes the assertion from councillor Brain that lives have been saved at Hawkspring through rehab, abstinence and follow-up support.

“I don’t know where I would be,” says Dan Nicholls, 38, who was on a litre bottle of alcohol a day before coming into contact with Hawkspring six months ago.

He has now spent three months without a drop, relapsed and been brought back on his feet again in the first steps in the long – and sometimes never-ending – journey of recovery.

“It’s the one-to-one care, the weekly meetings, the daily texts,” he says. “My parents have even been invited in so they can begin to understand just why, just why.”

One woman, who will remain anonymous, could so easily have gone down a very different route. Down and out with her life in disarray, she was suffering at the hands of four men who routinely broke into her house, stole her money and abused her.

After spiralling downwards in a circle of alcohol and drug abuse which left her weighing just five stone, she was eventually raped by two of them.

Lorraine found her in her flat with almost nothing left. “She was so thin we knew she was going to die,” she says. “We took her to the police, the hospital and eventually had to withdraw cash out for a B&B.

“We set her up with a hostel while her house was boarded up, we paid her bills and eventually we got her out of the city and into rehab.

“That woman walked through those doors just the other day. We couldn’t recognise her. She’d put on weight and – for the first time – has plans for the future. She was over the moon.

“She said I will always owe my life to what you have done.”

Just a month and a half from closure, Lorraine stares across the table and adds: “For me this is what’s at risk.”

In a last-ditch attempt to attract funding, Brain has submitted a statement to council.

“Bristol City Council has the power to prevent those deaths,” it reads. “I urge the Mayor to personally intervene to save Hawkspring so that these  deaths do not occur. It is not too late.”

The city council told Bristol24/7 it is offering grant funding to services outside of the official commissioned group from its new Innovation Fund.

“The council has supported the continued work of Hawkspring in South Bristol and has an ongoing dialogue,” it added.

To find out more about drug and alcohol services offered across Bristol by Bristol Drugs Project contact them on 0117 987 6000