After experiencing homelessness for around a year, Ashley moved into Turning Tides’ Roffey Place. Since filming, he has moved into our lower support Move On Housing and is back working locally as a chef. Watch the video of Ashley telling his story or read the full story below.

 

“I grew up in a in a nice family. We grew up in a place called Ardingly, which is a small village in Sussex. I had a traditional childhood, climbing trees, making mud pies, chasing each other with sticks, riding bikes, all of that classic sort of stuff. Very family orientated through my grandmother, my great great grandmother who lived to 108 years old.

Towards the end of it, things toughened up a bit through a relationship with my mother, remarried a man who was a bit heavy-handed towards us and for certain reasons, one or another, or maybe as a collective of reasons, she decided to divorce him. My brother and I and her moved to a town called Haywards Heath and that’s kind of where the good times kind of rolled to an end.

I went to college, started employment, MVQ Level 3 chef, worked at some really nice restaurants around the country. At very short notice, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, untreatable. She found out why she was on holiday in Turkey and she was diagnosed and dead within six months.

She was very important to me. She was my whole life really, and bit by bit, as the months pass by, I struggled to cope without her more and more and started drinking and using drugs. Then it escalated to drinking more and harder drugs and drinking more and harder drugs. Eventually my partner that I was with at the time, because of our young son, she decided that it was not a good place for me to be living in the family home for him being so young. She gave me a couple of opportunities to try and curb it, but unfortunately it was well out of control by then. So she asked me to leave. I agreed at the time that it was probably the best thing.

So I left the family home where I was and sofa surfed for a little bit and tried to get by and B&B’s for a little bit until money had totally run out through, you know, drug abuse and drinking and not being a very good reliable person.

Eventually friends and family wolf in of it. You know, there’s only so many times they can give you a second chance.  I ended up homeless for about a year and bobbed from here to there and just tried to stay warm and dry as much as I could until I was pointed in the direction of Horsham Council office, they mentioned this place to me, came for an induction within the space of a week I was moved in.

 

It was hard to adjust to at first, actually having a space of my own, you know, somewhere where I could retreat to, to sort of lick my wounds. You know, there were a couple of weeks when I first got here that I wasn’t really very sure about what I wanted to do was I was I here? What, what way was I going to move forward from here?

But since I’ve been here, it’s been fantastic.

Piece by piece to learn to pick myself back up again, you know, and it’s given me the opportunity here to care for my body, to get up and have a meal and to be able to wash my clothes and to wash my hair and just to take a bit of pride in myself.

I noticed quite shortly after that I started to take pride in other things and everything started to fall into place. I had some fantastic staff members here who introduced me to drugs counsellors and they’ve introduced me to a counsellor to talk about my mother’s bereavement, which was really helpful. Tara, she’s still here, she’s great and it’s been fantastic and piece by piece I’ve just put it slowly back together, support us and great people.

I’m not going to say it’s all been, you know, glamorous. There’s been times when I’ve been quite low and there’s been times that I’ve doubted it. But I’m at a place now where I’m confidently sober. The staff are very pleased to see where I am. I’m very pleased to see where I am.

My family is starting to come back to me. I’m seeing my son regularly again. Yeah, my mental health is astonishingly clear now. You know, there’s no anger, There’s no remorse. There’s no, you know, I’ve taken accountability for my mistakes. Physical health is good, mental health is really good.

Without this place could never have got to where I am.”