'I feel safe': How Anew helps pregnant homeless women and their babies

In one hostel she found herself in a room with seven other women, sleeping in four bunk beds. She had one of the top bunks. She had to climb up there, her legs swollen, her belly swollen, with the life that was growing inside her.

“I was placed on the top bunk and my legs were very swollen,” she says. “I said to myself I’d prefer to sleep on the road. I was vomiting and getting sick and I was, of course, overweight, and with eight people in the room. 

"And you’d never know when you came back to the room that your things would be there.”

Anna’s story in some ways has biblical resonance, with no room at the inn for a woman who is about to give birth. However, in today’s Ireland, it is a harsh indictment of the housing and homelessness crisis. 

The latest homeless figures, for January of this year, were a record high, with 15,286 people living in emergency accommodation. Of the total figure, there are 4,603 children. This is a 14% increase in the number of children living in emergency accommodation compared to 12 months previously.

Homelessness and children

Bad and all as it is for adults to find themselves in emergency accommodation, the effect on children, attempting to grow and develop, far from a secure base, is huge, and will most likely be felt long-term by society. 

Among these children there will inevitably be casualties who will not be able to recover from the drawbacks of an early life living in emergency accommodation. That will stunt their lives and in some instances will possibly culminate in resorting to crime. 

It is widely accepted that the harm homelessness does to adults is exponentially felt by children in the same situation. Most people, unless working in the area, are not faced with this reality up close. 

This was best illustrated by former housing minister Eoghan Murphy in his memoir, Running From Office. He recalled that soon after he took up the housing brief in 2017, a woman approached him at a social event. 

This was to “tell me about the children she was seeing who were having difficulties developing proper motor skills. Babies. Why? Because they were homeless and growing up in hotel rooms and didn’t have the space to crawl that other children had”. 

So it goes in today’s Ireland. And then there are the children who are literally born into homelessness. 

Anna's story

Anna, despite her desperate circumstance, was ultimately the recipient of more luck than most in her situation. 

She came into contact with Anew, a support service for pregnant homeless women and their babies. 

She was provided with a safe harbour to see out her pregnancy in an environment that feels like a home and with the assistance of professional people who know what a new mother needs: the physical, psychological and emotional support that can ease the process of birth and early nurturing for those at the fringes of society.

Anna is now staying at Anew’s cottage in the heart of Swords, Co Dublin. Her baby is a few months old and both are doing well. Last September, she was referred by a social worker to Anew. 

At first, she was wary. “I was afraid,” she says. “I had passed through so many hostels and I had had a very hard time when I met Grainne (Bollard, a team leader with the organisation). 

"But they made me feel safe and told me about the house and then, until I was able to move in, they kept in contact with me.”

Her baby was born in January. “It happened at 5am,” she says. “I just called Norma (one of the support workers). The house is staffed 24/7, a necessary measure under the circumstances. 

“Straight away she helped me with everything and called the ambulance. That came and brought me to hospital. Imagine if I had been in a hostel and especially, on the first floor without any lift, as some of them are.” 

The organisation has links with all three maternity hospitals in the Dublin area. After birth, she went back to the cottage. Typically, the women stay for around six months, taking in the last weeks of pregnancy and adjusting to mothering a new life. 

The early stages, as all parents know, are exciting, frightening, exhausting, but usually spent in a cocoon of support in a secure base. For women like Anna, the emotions are obviously the same, the scaffolding, however, is provided by Anew.

“When I came back from the hospital I got sick after a few days,” she remembers. “I got up at 1am and I was shaking and I had a very bad infection. Thank God Alan (Fitzgerald, support worker) was here and he helped me because I didn’t know what to do. 

What do you do with a baby when you are like that and you don’t have any family? They brought him to the hospital with me.

The cottage is staffed 24/7 to cater for all eventualities.

Most, but not all, of the women who come to Anew have experience of abusive relationships. A few may have partners with whom they are together without a home, but generally these women’s circumstances are attributable to the breakdown of a relationship, in one form or another.

“In broad terms, there are really three categories of women who are referred to us,” says Marian Barnard, the chief executive of Anew. “There are those who are already homeless and there are women who have become homeless as a direct result of their pregnancy. 

"They may have been thrown out of home, or have been victims of domestic violence and the pregnancy is the triggering piece that sees them out of the home. 

"Then there are women who have been in care themselves and they would be at a high risk of homelessness and come from a traumatic background.” 

In today’s world, she points out there are also migrant women among referrals who find themselves in one of the vulnerable categories. The organisation’s main base is Haven House in Dublin’s north inner city. This provides support in all aspects of pregnancy and homelessness for the women. 

The cottage in Swords accommodates four women and their new babies at any one time. Typically in a year around 15 women stay at the cottage. For those who get this level of support, it is life-changing but with the rising figures of homelessness it still represents a small cohort of pregnant women at risk of or living without a home.

In recent years, Anew purchased another premises, in Drumcondra, that provides step down or transition accommodation for the new mothers, catering for six at a time. From there, the new mothers have to leave the safe harbour provided by Anew and move back out into the world. 

There was a time when the organisation would be able to arrange for such mothers to find relatively secure and private accommodation at this point through the Housing Assistance Payment scheme. The tightening of the property market has now largely blocked off that avenue. 

Most mothers find themselves moving on to one of the family hubs established in recent years, where the standards, while good in some, is often uneven.

The evolution of Anew

Anew was first established in 1981, another lifetime, when the term crisis pregnancy usually related to a scenario that was in conflict with the pious mores that still permeated a society emerging from under the crozier. 

“Back then it probably would have catered mainly for women who were trying to hide their pregnancy from family or they leave the family home down the country and came up to Dublin,” Marian says.

Times have moved on, particularly with the housing crisis that developed and mushroomed after the 2008 economic collapse. 

When Marian joined Anew in 2015, the process of recalibrating the service, to provide the whole range of assistance that vulnerable pregnant women require, was already underway. 

As with many such services in the social sector, a range of State agencies, principally the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive and Tusla, fund the organisation. 

It is also a registered charity that can receive donations from the public though its website.

Echoes of old Ireland where vulnerable pregnant women were treated in an often appalling manner can sometimes be heard. The staff at the cottage in Swords are accustomed to an elderly lady calling to the door weekly with something for the new mothers inside.

"A lovely woman, every single Saturday she calls here,” Norma Fitzgerald, senior Anew manager says. 

“We invite her in for cup of tea but she never wants to come in. She just brings brand new baby stuff and a box of Roses. Recently there, she wasn’t around for a few weeks and then she came back and apologised that she was away for an eye operation. 

"She actually apologised. So lovely, no fuss about her. You know, there’s every possibility she has a story herself.”

Safe

Safe is the word that the staff at Anew use a lot. It’s also a word that Fara uses more than once to describe how Anew has made her feel since she came into contact with the organisation last September.

“I had lost my job because I was pregnant,” she says. “I was sharing a room with my friend but it was not working when I became pregnant and it was difficult to get a hostel.”

She arrived at the Swords home in January and gave birth soon after. 

“This is my first baby and I hadn’t any idea about it and I have no family here. Anew helped me to get a hostel first and then I was able to come here to their cottage. I was so happy. I feel safe and that is the big thing for me. Everything I need, information or anything you ask and they will get you the help.”

After they regain their strength and adapt to the life of a mother in trying circumstances, both women will have to move on within a few months. The transition facility in Drumcondra might be an option then if no proper housing can be sourced. 

One way or the other, the world will continue for those on the margins to be harsh but the grounding that they get in Anew can equip them with the kind of fortifications and knowledge that are needed.

The work is vital, yet its reach is only so far at a time when there are more and more women in need of a service like this. “We had over one hundred referrals last year,” Grainne Bollard, team leader, says. 

“We try to help any woman who is referred to us but we can only take in four at a time here, and at the end of last year we had a waiting list of 25,” she says.

“It’s safe and that is so important. We are the only service of this kind in the country and it would be great to see it in other cities. For now we do what we can.”