Dr Beth Watts – a senior research fellow at Heriot Watt University – has written a number of research papers on the subject of responses and charity towards homeless people.

Is there not a poverty of aspiration involved in just trying to make people warmer or fill their bellies, when actually what we should be trying to do is something more ambitious?

In her research, Watts argues that it may not be simply good enough to want to help a person who is homeless or rough sleeping, but that instead people who want to assist homeless people should look into how their efforts can help to get them out of homelessness.

She said it was important to consider whether improving someone’s situation in homelessness was the best way to help them.

Watts said she is not making a determination on whether these approaches were harmful, but rather that proper debate and research was needed.

“Now if you give a choice with leaving someone on the street and having them full up and warm or not, well then obviously the whole part of me wants them to be more comfortable,” she said.

She said that finally, the idea that all people could do with their efforts was to help keep people fed and warm could also be harmful to actually ending homelessness.

Read the full article on homelessness by Cormac Fitzgerald at TheJournal.ie