Homelessness, how much of yourself to bring into work, and changing the way you react with April Baker
April Baker. Illustration by Danielle Buerli
For my first Emotional Labour interview I wanted to talk to someone whose work I’ve long admired. April Baker works for Turning Tides, a charity which helps people experiencing homelessness in south east England.
April has run hostels and shelters in London and on the south coast. She and her teams have secured millions of pounds in funding for homeless services, created innovative housing and support schemes, and worked with thousands of people to help them access a place to sleep.
In short, she is a total powerhouse when it comes to getting stuff done. She is also my oldest friend, so I’m biased, but our friendship has given me a small window into the toll this work can take on people.
Because it is relentless. Homelessness is rising in the UK. There are well over a quarter of a million women, children and men homeless in England alone – and that’s just the people recorded as being in this situation. Homelessness has a high mortality rate, with a person affected by homelessness dying every 19 hours in the UK. It’s still a crime to sleep in a public place (you can thank the 1824 Vagrancy Act for that), and homelessness disproportionately affects minority groups and vulnerable people.
April and I talked about how she ended up in her career, whether the homelessness sector has created a self-defeating cycle, and how her work has impacted her personal life. I stalled for a while on whether to have this as the first interview. I know times are tough enough, and to warn you – we’re talking about death a lot. But we also talked about the ability of people, businesses and systems to self-examine and change for the better, and how to use your personal strengths for good in your community, both of which feel particularly important right now.
April is one of life’s radiators, so I trust you’ll leave feeling energised rather than drained.
“ In our day and age, how bad is it? We’re in 2020, and we still have people sleeping on the streets. That is ridiculous. Ridiculous. And it is something that can be solved.”
Olivia Gagan: Your job title for the past few years has been ‘head of homelessness’. What a job title. Can you sketch out what you do?
April Baker: I oversee services for homeless people. Actually, I hate using the term ‘homeless people’. For people experiencing homelessness.
I started at Turning Tides three and a half years ago. It was a new role in a small organisation, to basically help it grow. The more success we had, the more my role progressed, and so I became head of homelessness. In that role, I oversaw half of the operations of the organisation – our hostels, day centres, our outreach and specialist services – so getting people help for mental health, substance misuse, things like that.
But now we're going into the next phase of our growth. We've now got between 90-100 staff at any one time, and over 300 volunteers. Last year we had a £3 million budget, and this year it’s £4.7 million. So I'm coming out of operations to become head of development. I'll be able to focus on new business and property development, look after the quality and performance of the organisation, and build our community development.
Olivia: And in an average week, what are you doing?
April: I might spend a day in one of our hostels. A lot of my time is spent making sure my team and staff are supported, so I spend a lot of time in one-to-ones and in team meetings. I’ll be with other stakeholders like agencies and forums, looking at new business development. I might be sat with another organisation, drafting a bid for funding for a new service, or trying to get funding for an existing one. My role now is a lot more away from the front line than I've ever had before.
Olivia: Let’s go right back to the start…when I think of you as a teenager, I remember you loved reading or watching anything to do with psychology, crime or social justice. Those were the things that really seemed to light you up. Those interests or obsessions you had back when you were younger…do you think might have driven you towards this work as an adult?
April: One of my earliest memories is being five or six years old. I grew up in this small Victorian terraced house near Oxford, and all the gardens interconnected – I could get on my bicycle and I could cycle through everyone's gardens. There were a few older people in the row that lived on their own. I used to go and sit and talk to them, and I'd invite them to our house for cups of tea. My parents had to sit me down and say, if you do that, you have to ask first. You can't just bring people into the house.
From that point on, it started this fascination, I think, with other people. And being interested in feelings of loneliness, of isolation, in people not really getting what they need.
Then as a teenager I started reading crime and psychology books. I’d be on holiday with my mum and dad, sat there by the pool reading Talking with Serial Killers or something, and my mum would be saying something like ‘April, do you not want to read something a bit lighter?’! So all of that stuff fed my interests. I was fascinated by people I felt needed a bit more time, or a bit more care.
Olivia: You studied sociology at school, then you went on to the University of Brighton to take a degree in sociology and criminology. All of which would have set you up for a career in the police, or prison or the probation services. Why didn’t you go in that direction?
April: I was in university from 2007 to 2010. Austerity was hitting, and a lot of the statutory services – like the police, and so forth – they were freezing recruitment, and all the grad schemes were shutting down. The only one that was open was the prison graduate scheme.
I decided to volunteer whilst I was a student, so I did some work mentoring people coming in and out of prison. Because basically what was happening was, if you're sentenced to 12 months or less in prison, you will not get any support from the national probation service at all.
That means you go into prison, and then you come back out, and no-one's overseeing you during your sentence or your aftercare. These prisoners have the highest re-offending levels – so it wasn't making any sense. There's this pool of people going in and out, in and out, in and out. No-one's looking after them. Our job as mentors was to meet them at the prison gates, work with them whilst they're in prison, and try and find solutions together to prevent that re-offending loop.
I had to go and train in self-defence with the prison officers. I really hated it. I hated the environment, and I didn't believe it was the best place to rehabilitate individuals. I'd already gotten through the first round of exams for the prison graduate scheme, but I withdrew my application.
That felt like quite a hard hit, really. I'd been reading and studying all this criminology, convinced I was going to go into the prison graduate scheme and be a prison officer, working my way up in the prison service…but luckily I'd gone and done some training and started working in that prison. And I realised no, no, no, I don't think prison is working, and I don't believe in it.
So, then I didn't really know what I was gonna do. I started working in a little shop in Brighton called The Red Gecko. It was a really quiet, rainy day. I started to research on The Guardian for graduate schemes. And lo and behold, a scheme came up in the third sector. That's really what started my journey into homelessness. That’s when I started working in a 170-bed homeless hostel in Aldgate in London, and that led me to now.
Olivia: You have repeatedly had to deal with very serious, life-altering events. How has your relationship to that evolved over the years?
April: I think for me death has been quite a big thing in my twenties – both personally [one of April’s closest friends died unexpectedly] and in my work. It has at times caused quite a bit of my low points. The first person I ever found who had died was in that hostel in Aldgate.
To this day…I think that will always be the most shocking, severe moment in my career. I'd only been in my job about a month. I was on my own, I walked in, and he was already dead. I didn't deal with that well enough, and I didn't get good enough support to be able to move forward from that.
But it's different at every point of your career as to what you're being asked to do. By the middle part of my career, I was managing a hostel. If someone dies on your watch, you need to know that you have done everything you can. That is your responsibility. So then, it wasn't the trauma of being the first to see the incident, but it was the challenge of knowing, 'Oh my gosh, I've got to make sure everything's okay'.
Fast-forward to the most recent death I experienced, in September last year. I’m now one of the senior staff coming in to assist the hostel manager, to assist the team, to support them. And that's very removed. I'm not the person walking in and finding that person anymore. But I remember how that felt for me, so I come in and I make sure that everybody is okay.
What I want to do in my role nowadays is, I want people to have a dignified end. And I want everyone working to feel as supported as they can. So, I will make sure that staff that need to go home are able to go home, and the situation is managed as safely and sensitively as possible.
You're thinking, what's it like to be the worker that goes in and finds really difficult situations? It's our workers that really suffer the impact. The people that do it for years and years, I think they're amazing. I'm in awe of them.
Olivia: Over the past decade, have there been changes made in the sector? Is there more support now when something traumatic happens?
April: Definitely. For me, what's changed is that when I was a project worker experiencing these things, we didn't talk about it afterwards. I literally was allowed to leave half an hour early that first time, once the police had taken my statement. And that was it. I came back in the next day, got a hug from my team leader, and was told to crack on.
Whereas nowadays we have critical incident debriefings, where the teams come together and talk about it. We do regular check-ins with the people that have found individuals. We have reflective sessions, we have an employee assistance programme to access counselling. I still think we can do more and more, don't get me wrong. But it's about how those workers are looked after. That's my role now – not being the person needing to be looked after.
Olivia: Why did you stay in what is an incredibly difficult sector? As you were going through your twenties, what kept you on this path? Did you ever look around at your friends who were in office jobs and think, what the hell? I could be having a much less stressful time than I am in this industry.
April: No. I definitely...I have seen things and dealt with things that have had a significant impact on me. Right now, I can kind of recognise that I do need a break. To the point that I'm moving into a more strategic role. And I really have struggled at times working in services and managing services with people with high levels of trauma and aggression, and seeing systems not working.
But at no point have I ever felt in my twenties, in the decade just gone, ‘oh, actually maybe I'll go do an office job.’ Which is really interesting, ‘cause I've never realised that until you asked that question. I think I’ve gotten so much from watching people grow and develop.
Olivia: On a personal level, have you built up a toolkit to be able to take care of yourself when traumatic things happen?
April: I'm still developing that over time. What's amazing about many of our staff is that they have lived experience of being homeless. They have experienced addiction. They have experienced mental health issues and, you know, they've built up their toolkit. They've done the work, and they’re resilient. Whereas I was lucky – I hadn't experienced any of those things as a child or a teenager.
So suddenly I was 23, working in a large homeless hostel, then starting to manage my own hostel services. At the same time, I was in quite an abusive relationship, and my close friend had died suddenly. I started witnessing other people's trauma just as my own started to happen in my early twenties. With not enough life skills to deal with any of it.
My toolkit became drink, and not facing anything. Toxic relationships. Overworking – I put everything into work. My whole life just became about work. I was basically mixing up of a cauldron of not looking after myself and being in a difficult job. I was living on my own in London, so add in a lot of loneliness...mix all that up, and I totally burnt out. I had a breakdown to the point where I became agoraphobic.
I always held down my job, I always did the best I could. I wasn't by any means going into work drunk or anything like that, but I just didn't know how to cope with the things I was seeing. I hadn't been told this is what you could experience, and these are ways that you could look after yourself. I didn't have the resilience and the tools that I now have. I do worry about people coming into the sector like I did.
Olivia: What’s in your toolkit nowadays to keep you healthy and happy?
April: It's been a lot of trial and error. I have a morning routine now. I get up earlier than I ever used to, so I have time to do breathing exercises, to do journaling, to read. I've definitely started to explore therapies, particularly around anxiety. So I've had coaching, I've had hypnotherapy, I've had emotional freedom therapy, I've had CBT. And from each of those I've taken something, I’ve learnt a bit more. I treat myself to a massage now and then. I know how important it is for me to live by the sea, so that on bad days I can go for a walk along the beach. Connecting with my friends, and also knowing who your friends are and thinking about who is good for you is key too.
Olivia: And how strongly do you identify with your career and your work now? In your twenties you poured yourself into it, it was all-consuming. What's your journey been from that to now? Because you're not just your job. You're also a daughter, you're a friend, you're someone's fiancée, you’re all these different things. How sort of, ‘sticky’ is it to you, your professional label – is it as important to you now that you’re in your thirties?
April: No, it’s not. Now, when I go into work, I give it my all and I want to do the best I can. I want our organisation to achieve its mission to end local homelessness. I want us to be ambitious and I want us to be creative.
But when I'm out of work, I'm out of work. I want to have weekends where I can see my friends, where I'm exploring where I want to go and what I want to learn. Like yesterday – I went for a long walk, I went to yin yoga, which I love, and then I went out in the evening with my friends for dinner. [OG note – we did this interview before lockdown!] I wasn’t thinking about work. Whereas before I didn't have anything else. Now I have a home and a partner. I have a cat! I don't feel a need to identify with work as much as I used to.
Olivia here! I’m aware this is a long interview, so thank you for sticking with us. In the next part of the interview, we’re talking more about the wider homelessness industry and the ways it could improve. April explains the ‘Housing First’ idea to me (which has made Finland the only country in Europe where homelessness is falling). We also talked about how mentoring can be a great way to change the way you interact with people, and just how much of yourself and your emotions to bring into your job. We’re also looking at practical ways we can all make a difference within our local communities.
“If people don’t feel authenticity from you, they’re not going to trust you. And I think as a leader as well, the more your authentic self you can be, the more gravitas you have. The more people will be willing to follow you, because they can sense you’re consistent with what you say and do.”
Olivia: Whatever job you do, building trust with someone, whether it’s an employee or someone using your services…it's careful, difficult work. How much of your own personal feelings and responses have you brought into the workplace, and how has that affected your professional relationships?
April: Oh wow. Well, it's definitely changed over time. I think you have to bring quite a lot of yourself to work, in the work that I've done. If you don't, you can't build rapport. If people don't feel authenticity from you, they're not going to trust you. And I think as a leader as well, the more your authentic self you can be, the more gravitas you have. The more people will be willing to follow you, because they can sense you’re consistent with what you say and do.
And I'd probably say for me, one-to-ones with staff and one-to-ones with people that I've supported living in services, over the years, they’ve always felt good. It's when I have an audience that I worry more about who I am, about what kind of person I am. I have struggled with that at times.
I was very young when I went into management – I was 23, 24. I'm 33 now, and a senior manager. And the senior management team that I sit with now are at least 10 to 15 years older than me as well. So a part of me has always been thinking, 'Oh, you're too young.'
I think being a woman in an at times, male-dominated environment, and not feeling good enough for parts of it, has sometimes stopped me being my true self at work too. I’ve sat there in meetings thinking, 'don't speak up' or you know, 'toe the party line'. Or I would show my frustration, but I wouldn't show it in a way where the people around me could understand why. They would just see, okay, well, that's just April getting frustrated, or just wanting to complain about something.
I think also being young and being on the graduate scheme of a massive organisation meant I got opportunities that others didn't. I was mentored by the CEO. I spent a lot of time worrying people saw me as wanting to just keep going up and up.
Olivia: Yet it's unquestioned if a man wants to rise up through the ranks. Of course he does! Who wouldn’t want a promotion? Who doesn’t want to earn more money? The suspicion that surrounds women that want to move up the ladder…the labels you can get assigned are crazy. ‘She's overly ambitious’. ‘She's ruthless’.
April: Yep. ‘She's aggressive...’. In a previous organisation, I remember someone saying to me in a pay negotiation once, 'for a young girl, that's a nice salary, isn't it?'
Olivia: Have you ever felt like your emotions have gotten in the way of your career progression? You know how, say, if someone is seen crying in the office, they can then get characterised as weak or impulsive. Are there any dominant emotions that you've had to learn how to harness?
April: Oh, yeah. Very much so. Crying has never been an issue. Mine was anger. Which probably, deep down, was sadness. I've had to do a lot of work personally to let go of some of the anger I held on to, from things that have happened over the years. And to connect with some of that anger actually being sadness and grief as well.
Earlier on in my career, and probably up until about a year or two ago, people saw that I was talented, I was intelligent. I have grown services and found opportunities for all the organisations I've worked for. However, there would be a side to me where someone would say something I didn't like, and I could bite back. I think I did make people nervous. That wasn't a place I wanted to be, but then I met a very, very good mentor.
Olivia: You're such a believer in mentoring. You've actively gone after it – you approach really successful people you don’t know and say, 'please will you mentor me?' Why do you do that? And for someone else wondering about whether mentoring could be good for them, why is it so powerful and effective?
April: Well, that particular mentor held a mirror up and made me look at myself properly. Our first two sessions were probably the most transformational meetings of my life. That was when I went, 'Oh my gosh. These behaviours that I've been doing up until now, they’re no longer serving me. If I want to be the person I want to be in the future, I have to let some of this go.'
Now, when I start to feel that frustration bubbling in my stomach – it's always in my stomach – I can say to myself, 'Breathe. Listen – and properly listen to what somebody's saying, or what a group of people are saying.' And not get defensive, or you know, show that level of frustration.
“What is a home? What is it to have a home? If someone’s living in a privately rented flat, and every month they’re feeling threatened that their landlord could kick them out...is that a home, really? If someone’s sofa surfing, or living in a friend’s garage, are they a homeless person? Why don’t we call them that?”
Olivia: Can we talk a bit about homelessness in the UK at large? I know you've said to me before that sometimes you get quite turned off by the idea that homelessness is an industry. Can you explain what you mean by that?
April: It's so frustrating that in this day and age we have systems that are so incompatible with the needs of the individuals that need the systems. It's ridiculous. In our day and age, like, how bad is it? We're in 2020, and we still have people sleeping on the streets. That is ridiculous. Ridiculous. And it is something that can be solved. I would love to be made redundant from my job.
Olivia: Oh God, don’t say that!
April: Well, I would! It's a job that you don't want to have to have. You don't want to have to be having homelessness charities and rough sleeping in our society. And there is a part of me that sits here sometimes and goes...homelessness is an industry, isn't it? I have to examine that sometimes and go, am I OK with that?
Language for me is a big thing. If you think about ‘homeless’, just as a word, and the connotations and the power it carries...if you were labelled a ‘homeless person’, or a ‘rough sleeper’, or part of the ‘street community’, what would that do for you believing in yourself? That’s why I hate it when I say 'homeless people' or ‘a homeless man’. Because they're not, they're just people. Homelessness is a situation.
What is it to have a home? If someone's living in a privately rented flat, and every month they’re feeling threatened that their landlord could kick them out...is that a home, really? If someone's sofa surfing, or living in a friend’s garage, are they a homeless person? Why don’t we call them that?
Olivia: So there’s a risk of the industry making people all about being homeless – making it an identity, rather than addressing the root causes. Can you explain a bit about social constructivism?
April: There’s a really interesting charity called Mayday, which wrote an article about the concept of social constructivism. It’s the idea that being homeless has become an identity, and homelessness services and charities reinforce that identity.
And I wonder if my sector – and it hasn't meant to in any way – but if we've fed into that. As an organisation and as individuals, are we speaking in the way we should be? We call ourselves a 'homelessness charity'. Are we, though? Is that really what we’re dealing with? Yes, we work with people that may not have a permanent home right now, but it’s not just about that.
There is so much childhood trauma. There is a failing mental health system. There are substance misuse services that are unfit to meet the needs of people because they've been stretched and stretched, and they've got staff with huge caseloads. People are about so much more than their current living situation.
Olivia: There are so many factors at play here. But if there was one thing you would change about the way homelessness is handled in the UK, something that would make things improve, what would it be?
April: [long pause while April thinks and goes 'argghhh'] If I think about future generations, we've got to do earlier prevention. We've got to look at children's and young people’s services. We've got to look at our school systems, if you want to really look at what's happening here.
Because if you look at the demographics, at the backgrounds of people that are rough sleeping…the amount of people that were looked-after children is considerable. [A child who has been in the care of their local authority is known as a ‘looked-after’ child.] Look at the amount that didn't have stable upbringings. Look at the amount that didn't have access to a proper education. So, you've got to go early. The earliest, earliest prevention. So that's looking at what we could do for our future generations.
As for right now...I feel like moving forwards, we need to offer people some self-contained privacy as well as just a roof for the night. We've been operating our winter night shelters. Obviously, it's 10 million times better than being on the streets when it's minus three, and when there's storms. At least people can come inside. But can you imagine going into a hall with 15 other people, all with different needs, and trying to sleep through the night? Getting any kind of sleep at all?
The Housing First idea is, give people their own home. That means they're not sharing high levels of trauma all in one building, or having to meet certain requirements. Just give somebody a home. Then start handling everything else. And think about creative ways of doing that.
Another solution is around empty buildings. For example, a few years ago we got gifted a building by a housing developer. That building was going to be empty for five years, but now it houses people every single day. That housing developer is socially minded. He said, “here you go – have this building, I just need it back in five years.” Let's get creative like that. There are so many empty buildings in the UK.
It’s also important to recognise that I haven’t been homeless. I have learnt experience. It’s critical to also include people with lived experience when designing and developing services.
Olivia: It sounds like there are these massive systemic, structural changes that need to happen. On an individual level, what is the best way someone can help? Is it through giving individuals money on the street? Is it through donating to charities? Is it volunteering? Is it via their politics, through voting? What can people be doing when they encounter someone who is sleeping rough?
April: It depends on the individual. The first thing I'd always say is, if you're walking down the street and you see somebody on the street, smile. Say hello. That's first and foremost. If people want to give money to other people, that is their choice. Earlier on in my career, I used to be like, "no no no, I wouldn't give money. I wouldn't do that."
Now, I actually think – we're adults. That’s your own decision. I really feel it is somebody's personal choice and right as to what you want to do regarding money, but just be kind. At least treat a person as a person, as a human being. You don't know somebody's story. Even if someone is actively begging, you don't know the long waiting lists they've had to try and get help through. You don't know that they haven't tried to resolve this.
If you are interested in doing more, I would recommend donating locally as well as to the larger organisations. I can't stress that enough. Look up who are the really locally embedded charities, if you want to see an impact happen really quickly.
For years, my parents have been donating to Shelter and places like that. They do amazing work. They're the big charities, the ones that are fighting with the politicians, fighting for better policies. They’re fighting for people’s legal rights. So if that's the direction you want to go in, do absolutely donate to those larger charities like Shelter and Crisis.
But if you want to see an impact in your community, look up your small, local homelessness organisations. They’re the ones that will get basic needs met for individuals. They will have the day centres for the showers, for the food, for the clothing, for that safe space. They're the ones that are running the hostels and the services.
Olivia: and what about volunteering?
April: You know, when I say 'volunteer', people say, 'Do you mean helping in a soup kitchen?' If you want to do that, that's great. But volunteering can involve a lot more than that. What do you do in the world? It might be that you're an online marketing manager. OK, so you do communication. What can you offer from that skillset?
Spend a day helping a charity with their social media presence, if social's your thing. We have amazing trustees on our board from a wealth of professional backgrounds, from finance to HR. We have a solicitor. We have volunteers who are yoga teachers, personal trainers, acupuncturists. We have people who are really good at administration, so they come and give a bit of their time to us. So yeah…bring us your skills!
Olivia: And this is my final question for you...in terms of the biggest thing you've taken away from a decade of working pretty intensively and talking with people who currently don't have a home, what's the biggest thing you've taken away from that?
April: [long silence] The biggest thing for me is that we're all human and we all have the same needs.
And just that everyone deserves kindness. Everyone deserves safety. I think a big thing for me is dignity. Making sure people feel dignified, that's the core of everything. Because once people have that, they know what to do. We all know who we are, really. We just need safety and to have our basic needs met first. If an individual doesn't have that, how can they even start that process [of knowing themselves]? That's been a key thing for me.
We're fighting for our human rights. So I think the biggest thing for me if I had to come away from this sector…it would be around absolutely upholding people's dignity and giving them the space and the care that they need.