Some of the North-East’s biggest companies are leading a programme to help homeless people get back to work. Business Editor Owen McAteer talked to Barry Trainor, who rebuilt his life after substance misuse and homelessness, about the importance of the programme.

ONE of the most moving moments at the launch of the Ready to Work programme in September was a speech by Barry Trainor on how he had turned his life around.

Mr Trainor, 42, had been a promising amateur boxer and then successful stage entertainer before falling prey to drink and drugs and losing everything, including his home.

After going through rehabilitation, he has now been in full-time employment with The Cyrenians for the past three years.

The Cyrenians run Ready to Work on behalf of Business Action on Homelessness in partnership with software company Sage and bakery firm Greggs.

It is the first programme of its kind in the North-East, and will provide homeless people from the Tees Valley to Newcastle with skills to get a job.

The three-year programme will offer homeless people support, work placements, mentoring and pre-employment training by firms.

Carillion, Royal Mail and Marks & Spencer have also pledged their support, and the Northern Rock Foundation will fund the majority of the project, after which it is hoped it will become self-sufficient.

At the launch, outgoing Sage chief executive Paul Walker said he believed the programme would help reduce the stigma of being homeless for people applying for jobs.

And as Mr Trainor had found from personal experience, reducing this stigma was vitally important.

He said: “When someone sees a drug addict or an alcoholic they don’t tend to think they have had a life before that.

“Why should people see beyond that – as far as they are concerned we have always been on the streets.”

In the early Nineties, Mr Trainor lived in a plush part of Leeds, owned a motor home and car and thought work would never dry up.

In 1992, the stage hypnotist was booked for a full calendar year, with only 11 days off, by his own choice.

But then he travelled to Tenerife for three months work and tried hard drugs for the first time.

This led to a downward spiral which, by his own admission,left Mr Trainor “not living in the real world”.

Having once been able to command £500 a night, he found himself doing gigs in Newcastle for £70, which was spent on drugs and alcohol.

It was more than a decade later he was able to get off drink and drugs, after the Cyrenians helped arrange a place at a rehabilitation centre for him.

Having completed rehab the challenge for Mr Trainor was then to find employment.

He said: “I became unemployable because of the 12-year employment gap. There was no concrete evidence I had worked and what I had done had been agency work.”

A job came up at the Cyrenians as an outreach worker for people with drug and alcohol problems, for which part of the criteria was having a personal understanding of the issues.

Mr Trainor prepared a CV, which a friend helped him fine-tune, and he was one of 20 people interviewed for the role.

That afternoon he was phoned and told he had the job.

Mr Trainor said: “I couldn’t believe my luck. I stood there in shock, because suddenly I had this job.”

Three years on, Mr Trainor is a highly-respected member of the Cyrenians staff, with an NVQ level three and specialist training in health and social care.

He said: “I have since looked at the CV that I did when I first came out of rehab, and my main focus was where I had been.

“Now I believe I am a specialist in my field, and it is not because of where I have been, it is because of what I have done in the past four years. The substance misuse in the past is a single part of what I am – when I first started looking for work it would be all I was.”

Programmes such as Ready for Work are important because, as Mr Trainor has shown, once somebody overcomes their problems they can put that experience to good use in the workplace.

He said: “Once somebody is over the other side there is no difference between employing someone who has experienced it and someone who hasn’t.

“A lot of the time they will work harder because they love life.”

He believes the support of respected business people, such as Greggs’ chief executive Ken McMeikan, was important.

Mr Trainor said: “Ken is not doing this because he needs publicity, he is doing it because he is genuinely interested and wants to make a difference.”

Now married, Mr Trainor’s life is completely different from four years ago. “It is unbelievable to have a normal life now,” he said.