I wish I’d known that

I used to work in a direct access hostel in King’s Cross for ex-rough sleepers. I had not been the manager for long when a man came into my office really angry and threatening to hit me. His support worker had given him a verbal warning and he had gone berserk. He was a big man and I couldn’t escape because my room only had one door.

He said he wanted help with social housing and mental health problems but the support worker wanted to talk about his cooking and budgeting skills.

What I learned

First, if you have staff quarters in a hostel, they need to be secure. When we built other schemes we gave offices more than one exit, panic alarms and bigger windows so there were sight lines between staff and no one was isolated.

The King’s Cross hostel was staffed only by men but I have since worked with a 50/50 balance of men and women. I now think it was dangerous to have a men-only team – the presence of women can defuse threatening situations.

I also realised how dangerous it was if staff were not clear about what they were doing. A lot of these projects used new staff who didn’t have a lot of training, but they were dealing with people with drug and alcohol problems.

I later got to know the tenant and learned that he was angry because our staff failed to deliver a service – the worker he was angry with was perhaps too ready to threaten people with eviction. You need to recruit workers who have an understanding of people.