“WHAT’S IN A NAME?”

by Esther Smith

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In the case of Caring For Life, the name signifies a great deal. February 2007 marks twenty years since the work of this Trust began, a simple response to the needs of homeless young people who had turned to Christian people for help.

The term “homelessness” may conjure up images of young people begging on city streets, people selling the Big Issue, or older vagrants drifting through cities and smaller towns. Whatever image we may have in our minds, it is a fact that the state of homelessness, i.e. a person having nowhere at all to live, hides a world of problems.

Just a few of the people we have supported over the years, some of whom are still in our care.

The homeless young men who arrived at Leeds Reformed Baptist Church back in late 1986 were not only homeless or very inadequately housed and cared for; they also had no one else to turn to, so they turned to people they had known in childhood: residential workers from local authority children’s homes who attended that church, the pastor and teachers in the Sunday School who had known them when they were much younger.

These young men and the 80 or so young people who joined them in requesting help as soon as they knew a home was to be opened, had one thing in common; they were alone in life. Just a few had a family member they could turn to but not one person who could actually house and support them.

For a young person to have no one to turn to, something has gone very wrong, long ago, and that means that helping that person involves very much more than providing them with a home. It also means that we need to be there for the long haul. All of us need reliable people to turn to at different points in our lives and for people who have very few roots and sometimes virtually no ”history”, it is even more vital that we care for people for life.

When the charity was formed and homes were opened in response to this need, the name Caring For Life was chosen for a number of reasons. Firstly, to show that the Trust would offer care to these and other homeless or vulnerable people for as long as they wished that care to continue. If need be, care, love, support and indeed a home would be offered for life.

Secondly, it signified the fact that the Trust would care for all people, whatever their needs or their background, because all are made in the image of God.

Twenty years on, those involved in the work can only praise God for His wonderful goodness and faithfulness in enabling this ministry to continue, to grow and to offer real, tangible support to so many people.

The name means what it says. Just recently, one of the first young men we housed in our initial home, Carey House, turned to us once again for help. He had lived in our first home for some years, had received individual tuition in literacy and numeracy and had been able to move on into his own flat and a job. Although still in paid employment, his housing situation had fallen through due to a relationship breakdown and he was homeless once again. Caring For Life was able to offer him support, pay a bond and advance rent on a new home and get him settled into a new and pleasant studio flat.

In such situations another person might have turned to parents or friends for help. Caring For Life acts as an extended family for those who do not have such support networks and all this love, care and unconditional positive regard, (to quote a phrase explained to us in training by our consultant educational psychologist, Gayle Nixon), springs out of the wonderful love shown to each of us, day by day, by the Lord Jesus Christ.

At the heart of this ministry is our response to the love of Christ for us and this is the essence of the work, embraced in our motto,”Sharing the love of Jesus”.

As we celebrate our twentieth anniversary in February, we thank God for all the love and practical care that has been offered in His name and we register our sincerest thanks to our supporters, many of whom pray for us each day and give as generously as they are able. We face huge challenges, but we face them with Christ and with His help we will continue to offer help to those who have nowhere else to turn. Our prayer is that many more will come to know His love for themselves and will be with us forever in eternity, by God’s grace.