Town with a Seaview
MEL STEEL
The Seaview Project in St Leonards is a rare thing: a genuinely local community charity that has survived for 40 years without ever compromising on its core mission – which might be understood, very simply, as: ‘We see you, and we’re here for you.’
Seaview in 1988
“They’re always here to help,” says Mick. At 73, he’s now the project’s longest-standing regular service user, having been introduced to Seaview by a friend in 1990. “They’ve helped me a lot,” he says, “with my dyslexia, with housing, with food, clothes, dealing with the social.They even helped me get a dog for company.”
Seaview is often characterised as ‘just’ a homelessness day centre – but it’s a lot more than that. In fact, homelessness wasn’t even part of its remit when it was first established in 1985.
It was around that time that the Thatcher government of the day shut down many of the old psychiatric hospitals – asylums – that had existed since Victorian times, and instituted in their place something called ‘care in the community’. What this meant in practice was giving people who had been long-term hospital inpatients in London or elsewhere a one-way train ticket to the seaside and letting them fend for themselves.
There was no dedicated support or infrastructure in place for the new arrivals, and little for people to do other than stroll the desolate seafront and shelter in cheap cafés. A small group of local people met to discuss what they could do to support those they described as ‘socially stranded’, who had been discharged to Hastings and St Leonards from London and from Hellingly Hospital, formerly the East Sussex County Asylum, near Hailsham. A day centre was needed, they decided: “a friendly environment…a place where people who may feel lonely or isolated can meet other people, have tea or coffee, and join in an activity.” And so Seaview was born.
Seaview Choir 2025 Carol Concert
That ethos endures, and the friendly café remains the heart and soul of the centre; but the project’s remit and demographic has since significantly broadened. Staff and volunteers now work with around 1,200 people a year struggling with complex and multiple needs including mental health, homelessness, poverty, substance misuse and physical health. Typically, their service users are people who don’t engage with other services, and especially not with statutory services. Anyone is welcome and everyone is valued.
“It’s a safe haven for anyone who needs it,” explains Anne, a long-time volunteer. “You don’t need a referral. It’s open access. You don’t have to fill in a form.”
“Some people come in crisis, others stay longer, and for some Seaview is like family,” says project manager Sue Burgess, who’s been working at Seaview on and off for 30 years now. “People are often understandably mistrustful when they come here, and it can take a long time to build trust back – but we’re very good at breaking down barriers.”
She shows me around the centre and talks me through their services. The café is vibrating at a low and relaxed hum, with some people chatting, some playing pool, some just sitting quietly with a cuppa. A cup of tea here will set you back just 10p; a coffee 15p. “It means that service users can offer to buy drinks for each other, not just themselves, and feel good about it,” says Sue.
Showers, laundry facilities, phones and computers are freely available. An early breakfast for rough sleepers runs a couple of times a week, and the rough sleeper outreach team goes out at 5.30am every day to check on people and provide them with some basics. Nurses, dentists and specialist clinics visit regularly, and the centre hosts an art group, a choir and even its own band. In one corner of the main hall a mini gym is in the process of being set up, and in another, still wet, is one of the pianos that forms part of the Painted Pianos project accompanying the Hastings International Piano Competition.
For those who want more than just a cuppa in a safe space, there are dedicated caseworkers and specialist support workers to help them navigate the opaque and sometimes hostile systems outside. Regular users are encouraged to join a service user group to help improve and design internal services, while ex-service users deliver their own award-winning training to external local services including the police, commissioners, social services and healthcare agencies.
One of those delivering training is ex-service user Jeff, now 55. Brought up in the care system, he was sent to Hastings from London when he was 10, sent to “naughty boys’ school” in his teens, spent time in and out of jail for theft, burglary and drugs, and had acquired a very respectable heroin habit by his late 20s. By the age of 40 he was, he says, unemployable and an entrenched addict. He became street homeless and stayed that way for the next four years.
At 51 he’d suddenly had enough. He was, he says, “absolutely broken”. By this point he was suffering from drug-induced psychosis and schizophrenia, hadn’t seen his kids for 20 years and had stopped counting the people he knew who had died from drugs when the tally got to 50.
The failure rate for rehab is 97%. Jeff is one of the 3%. He’s been clean for nearly five years, paid his debts off, got his driving licence back, reunited with his wife and is learning the guitar. He first came to Seaview, he says, so he could get a free meal every day. Now he volunteers here five days a week. “You can only keep what you’ve got by giving it away,” he says, beaming.
For those struggling to get off the streets, the lack of social and affordable housing in the town is one of the key barriers, and many of the project’s users are single men who are not considered to be in ‘priority need’ by the council. Which is why Seaview is thrilled to have just secured funding to buy its own house in St Leonards. The property will provide safe accommodation for up to six months for nine rough sleepers who would otherwise be unable to get off the street and find a route into stability. Building work is already under way but the project is asking for help from businesses and the local community to bring it to fruition and turn the house into “a warm, welcoming home, a place of hope, dignity and new beginnings.”
John, a support worker, tells me about a client of his who was 62, street homeless and had been refused accommodation by the council. He survived on the streets, with an increasing impact on his health, for three years. Finally, he was offered a tenancy – only to die six months later.
“This house could have saved his life,” says John.
To donate to ‘Help Us Make a House a Home One Brick at a Time’: For more info: seaviewproject.co.uk/fundraising
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Thank you for the fabulous write up Mel, you captured the spirit of Seaview brilliantly.
Anna