Half of a Shropshire town’s street sleepers have homes or places to go, it has been revealed. Members of Shrewsbury Severn Rotary Club have been told that some of the street sleepers in Shrewsbury, trying to fund drugs and alcohol, ‘tell a very good story.’
The operations director of Shrewsbury Street Pastors Steve Jones also revealed to Rotarians there was a big issue – spiking. The Street Pastors have joined an anti-spiking scheme which is now national. “This is a brand new scheme which we piloted in Shrewsbury so we are leading the way,” Steve revealed.
The Street Pastors distribute spikey stoppers which are put in the top of a bottle to prevent a substance being added. In addition, test strips indicate whether any additional substance has been added to a drink. He also described how Street Pastors had been involved in closing down a County Lines cell which had taken thousands of pounds worth of drugs off the streets and helped limit the problem in Shrewsbury.
He told Rotarians of a veterinary drug which had come onto the streets of Shrewsbury and was ‘really dangerous.’ “That’s the intelligence we have when we go on the street, but we are desperately short of people to be Street Pastors and part of the night time economy.”
Street Pastors are all volunteers, from local churches and different places, committed to 46 hours of training – ranging from drug awareness to mental health issues and suicide prevention – to come together on a Saturday night. “We work within the loop of the river until 3.00 am or 5.00 am, the latest being quarter to six in the morning, and deal with a whole range of issues while on the streets. We are there to care, listen and help as a big change over the last three years has been in the number of people saying they are going to commit suicide. Ours is a very different role to that of police officers who carry truncheons – we carry lollies to calm people down.”
He said Street Pastors had been formed as a result of river deaths and he demonstrated how a rope in a bag was lobbed to someone in the river to help pull them in and he personally had been involved in three river rescues.
“Over 12 years there have been 15 river deaths – 15 too many, but it could have been a lot more,” Steve added.
Anyone interested in learning more about Shrewsbury Severn Rotary Club can contact gdmw@hotmail.co.uk
