New Mayor of Salisbury supporting homelessness charity
Mayor Wells has chosen Alabaré as his charity to support in his year as Mayor
The new Mayor of Salisbury is telling us why he's chosen to support a local homelessness charity during his year as Mayor.
Cllr John Wells took the mayoral chains from Sven Hocking last Saturday (11th May) and has selected Alabaré as the organisation to benefit from his support.
He told Greatest Hits Radio that homelessness is a "significant issues" both locally and nationally, presenting itself as rough sleeping.
"I'm interested in how this organisation works in resolving the issues for those individuals," Mayor Wells said.
He added that the charity's successes needed to be shouted about more: "People do have issues resolved through Alabaré, and I think that needs to be given a higher profile because if a group is working hard to support people who've forever reason are having a difficult time, it's something that needs to be flagged up.
"I think that might make people more aware of what is going on behind the scenes to resolve individual problems and make life a lot better for those people."
An issue seen first-hand
People often end up without a home through circumstances beyond their control, including family breakdown or loss of employment.
As a former teacher, Mayor Wells said he's seen the impact of family break ups.
"I've encountered the sort of disadvantages that come with, you know, family break up the economic impact of their lives and so forth," he said.
He added: "Through the school I was picking up the pieces in terms of the impact of the children because that that isn't as obvious through people becoming homeless."
The Mayor described people sleeping rough as the "tip of the iceberg".
"It's a difficult thing to pin down because it's such a diverse and complex problems and often kept outside the normal range of services."