Free A Gift Of Hope: Helping The Homeless Compiled By Danielle Steel Digital

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and quick read. This book helps in understanding author's life, How author started working for the homeless, What is important to note is the "hope" factor that author believes, A Gift of Hope is just one story out of Danielle Steels life, In A Gift of Hope, author Steel shares with us the ten years she spent helping the homeless, I really appreciated how author Steel, in her kind and thoughtful way, introduced readers to the good, the bad, and the ugliness of homelessness.
I had the opportunity to work with the homeless and was fortunate in having taken a workshop about understanding homelessness, The workshop enabled me to understand and relate to the ups and downs experiences that author Steel and her team encountered,

A Gift of Hope is a book for every reader of every age, A Gift of Hope was a great read, a fast read and an educational read, In spite of Angela Dawes storytelling, I enjoyed the story immensely,


I have never read anything by Danielle Steel and came across this book by chance, I should say by Providence because all things are part of Gods will whether direct or indirect, While this was not a page turning novel it was something I hated to put down and if this book serves no other purpose in my life than to remind me of the dignity of each person and that there but for the grace God go I.
Then it has been worthwhile,
Author Danielle steel tragically lost her son to suicide, . after many years of battling bipolar disorder, Having lost her son and trying to deal with her broken marriage , she found herself in a very desperate and low place in her life.
She spent a great deal of time sitting in the quiet of a church, . . lighting candles and asking God for help, The answer she felt she received was not the one she was looking for or one that she felt that she wanted, . she felt she was to go out into her city of San Francisco and offer outreach in the homeless community, This book is her story of theyears she spent on this loving outreach with a group of dedicated friends, . . which included a couple of police officers who were instrumental in keeping the group safe and street smart,

For years, Ms, Steel and her group called "Yo! Angel" went out onto the streets of San Francisco and distributed warm coats, gloves, hats and sleeping bags to the city's homeless population.
In her outreach, Ms. Steel learned many things about this forgotten and invisible population, She found that many of the homeless were also mentally ill and in those mentally ill people, she was reminded over and over of her son and his battle with mental illness.
. discovering that, despite his eventual suicide, he had actually been one of the luckier ones who had had a loving and supportive family and the resources to try to deal with his mental illness.


Ms. Steel provided some opinions on ways that society can help in this crisis, . . one of which I am in total agreement with, She says "We need laws that allow us to hospitalize people when necessary, for treatment and safekeeping, even without their consent, Perhaps the people who make the laws, or the citizens who vote for them, have no idea how vulnerable the mentally ill are on the streets, and what very real danger they are in.
"

Ms. Steel's outreach to those that are often invisible in our society was very moving and inspirational, Although Ms. Steel referred tho the task she had undertaken as sometimes overwhelming and described her generous efforts as "emptying the ocean with a thimble.
our thimble so tiny and the ocean of need so huge", I feel her story is both educational and inspirational, Perhaps her 'gift of self' will spark the compassion of each person who reads it and will motivate them to also reach out to someone in need.
I do not read Danielle Steel's usual genre, but in this memoir she recounts heryears of working with the small team of people she assembled to help hand out much needed coats, gloves, socks, shoes, and sleeping bags to the homeless people she found on the streets of San Francisco.
Ms Steel kept this mission of hers quiet for many years after the suicide of her mentally ill son, she asked for guidance in what she could do to help herself find healing.
The answer she received was not what she would have chosen for herself, but she went about the task diligently and did not question what she felt was God's vision for her.
Now she is telling this story, and adding some advice on what is most needed to help many of the homeless population, as well as the mentally ill.
Although the writing is not outstanding, the information and the stories she tells were engrossing, An eye opening experience to see what the homeless lifestyle is like, what needs to be done, and how we can help, In her powerful memoir His Bright Light,New York Times bestselling author Danielle Steel opened her heart to share the devastating story of the loss of her beloved son.
In A Gift of Hope, she shows us how she transformed that pain into a campaign of service that enriched her life beyond what she could imagine.

 
For eleven years, Danielle Steel took to the streets with a small team to help the homeless of San Francisco, She worked anonymously, visiting the “cribs” of the citys most vulnerable citizens under cover of darkness, distributing food, clothing, bedding, tools, and toiletries.
She sought no publicity for her efforts and remained anonymous throughout, Now she is speaking to bring attention to their plight,
 
In this unflinchingly honest and deeply moving memoir, the famously private author speaks out publicly for the first time about her work among the most desperate members of our society.
She offers achingly acute portraits of the people she met along the wayand issues a heartfelt call for more effective action to aid this vast, deprived population.
Determined to supply the homeless with the basic necessities to keep them alive, she ends up giving them something far more powerful: a voice.

 
By turns candid and inspirational, Danielle Steels A Gift of Hope is a true act of advocacy and love.
It was definitely not your typical Danielle Steel book, It was more like a poignant novella, Foryears Danielle and her crew, distributed clothes, sleeping bags, gloves, hats and later food, bags and even teddy bears to homeless people.
Who knew She kept it a secret for a long time, It made me aware of the great needs of the homeless all over the country, Other countries have problems but some handle it much better, This prayer inspired mission gave the poor people and the givers so much hope and blessings, We can all use those wonderful commodities! A great little book, Ms. Steele relates some poignant experiences in her eleven years of assisting the homeless in San Francisco, I was touched, indeed almost brought to tears at one or two points in the book, You couldn't read this book and not come away with a much deeper and more humane appreciation for the plight of the homeless in America.
This book can easily be read in one sitting, An interesting account of helping the homeless a bit repetative in places but touching I've never read any Danielle Steel novels, but this audio is a memoir of her experiences of taking to the streets of San Francisco to help the homeless.
Quite a courageous and generous woman! Danielle Steel is an outstandingly popular novelist, but her books don't appeal to me, so as far as I was concerned she was an unknown entity.
It was only when I heard of this particular book dealing with her work with homeless people in San Francisco, that my interest was piqued.


Steel didn't start her work out of sympathy for the homeless, but rather it was via a sad and unusual route.
She has nine children, but one of them, a greatly beloved son, was bipolar, In the grip of a deep depression, aged, he made four unsuccessful suicide attempts, Six months later he made another, and this time succeeded, Perhaps under the stress of this, her marriage then disintegrated,

Shortly after that, Steel, who is deeply religious, was praying, and it was during her prayers that she heard God asking her to help the homeless, She was far from pleased about this, ""trying to pretend that I hadn't heard that message clearly in my head, How about some other project Working with children maybe I was good at that, All my life I had been a somewhat skittish person, nervous about unusual or ominouslooking people, frightened when drunks or homeless people approached me in the street.
Their intrusion into my neat, orderly, clean life was something I wanted to avoid, not embrace, "

But embrace them she did, and to the date of publication has done so for eleven years, She chose not to work with an established charity, but rather create her own initiatives, Ten or twelve times a year she and a small band of friends would take to the streets in two vans, stopping to deliver warm clothing and bedding, rainproof ponchos or coverings for sleeping bags, and also food.
The book is about the people she met on the streets, and her views about the problems they face,

Three issues stood out for me:

The challenging administrative hoops that people have to jump through in order to get help.

There are programs in every city designed to assist homeless people get off the streets, or so they say.
But in truth only the most functional among the homeless are able to access those programes, Lines are endless, forms are impossible to decipher, qualifications can't be met, standards don't apply, Waiting lists for every kind of facility keep people on hold for months for medical care, detox programmes, housing, Some waits are as long as a year,

The way the temporary shelters of homeless people can so easily be destroyed, often by the authorities, . . and how this affects the lives of these people,

The system I saw used most frequently to address the homeless was harassment.
I kept hearing about the DPW, The Department of Public Works, The theory is that if people are going to 'insist' on living on the streets, then the city will just have to clean them up, tidy them up, and teach them a thing or two.
Admittedly, the belongings of homeless people look messy, But how neat can you be when you're living in a cardboard box, and everything you own is in a shopping cart with three wheels The DPW solves that problem.
They arrive with a giant dump truck, and if the homeless person is momentarily away, . the DPW truck scoops up all their belongings, and tidies up the mess for

them, And suddenly the homeless person has no bedding, no clothes, and so little to their name that you weep to see it, After the DPW truck does its job, they have absolutely nothing at all except the shirts on their backs, and rubber flipflops, . . the DPW takes away what little they do have and leaves them even more helpless and illequipped to survive than before, . We have to do a whole lot better than just hauling away their belongings in a garbage truck, leaving them crying on the street.

Finally, and most contentiously, Steel's opinions about the need to change mental health legislation so that people can be held involuntarily in psychiatric hospitals for longer than is currently the case.

Some people say that homelessness is a result of not having enough mental hospitals.
But the problem is more complex, Even if we had enough hospitals, we have no way of getting people into them and convincing them to stay there for treatment.
I have long felt that our current system, where mentally ill people must agree to be hospitalised unless they have proven themselves to be a danger to society is a nice theory, but just doesn't work.
Right now, in our current system, the decision to be hospitalised rests in the mentally ill person's hands, It's up to them. And realistically, many or even most of them are not in a position to make that decision for themselves, Families with mentally ill relatives can do nothing to get them off the streets, or hospitalise them for treatment, . I have several friends who have adult children some in their thirties and forties who have been homeless and lost to them for years.
There is absolutely nothing the parents can do about it, and sometimes they wind up in jail rather than hospitals if they step over the line society sets for them, or exhibit behaviour that breaks a law.


I believe we need laws that allow us to hospitalize people when necessary, for treatment and safekeeping, even without their consent.
. Perhaps the people who make the laws, or the citizens who vote for them, have no idea how vulnerable the mentally ill are on the streets, and what very real danger they are in.
The laws we have now are wellintentioned, and do avoid the situations we all read about years ago, when some unsuspecting mentally healthy person could be put away in a mental hospital against their will, often as a result of their family's greed or selfserving motives.
Today's laws prevent that from happening, but the net is so broad now that we can no longer hospitalise those who need it most.
Our hands are tied. So instead of getting treatment, or being helped by those who care about them, mentally ill people are homeless on the streets, The general consensus is thattopercent of homeless people are suffering from some form of mental illness, and they're not getting the help they need.


In San Francisco ,a statute of the health code called aallows you to hospitalise persons exhibiting inappropriate or bizarre behaviour for seventytwo hours for evaluation.
That gives mental health professionals three days to study their behaviour and make a decision as to whether or not they are a danger to themselves or others.
If not, it is nearly impossible to extend the three days for a longer period with the help of a, But sometimes it takes longer than three days to assess a psychiatric problem, . We can't hospitalise these people to protect them, no matter how vulnerable their state or confused their mind, As long as they are not 'dangerous' they are free to go, back to a world where they are preyed upon, in constant danger, and in no condition to cope with the rigours of street life or the constant threats lurking there.
Sometimes, no matter how sad, that decision should be taken out of their hands,

I was very pleased to have read this book, .





I can't resist adding a link to this short video about an initiative in Seattle to help the homeless.
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sitelink youtube. com/watchvsCzBi .