Tom Starbuck works as a customer ambassador at Victoria station after going through therapy to deal with his childhood trauma
Standing in Trafalgar Square on a dim afternoon in 1996 Tom Starbuck realised he was homeless. Aged 26, a confrontation with a family member led to a mental breakdown, prompting his decision to leave and walk all the way from Walthamstow to Central London.
Speaking to MyLondon thirty years later, Tom said a mix of childhood trauma and a breakdown in family relationships led to him feeling completely alone with nowhere to turn. “I was bullied really badly at school, almost on a daily basis and it left me very secluded,” he said.
“I didn’t have friends so I spent a lot of time in my own bedroom watching television. Because of this, there were a couple of older people who took advantage of me, so I went into my 20s with a lot of mental issues.”
Upon realising he was homeless, Tom called a helpline who directed him to a shelter in Clapham. After nine months Tom was able to move out and get a new job, but he had not dealt with his childhood trauma.
One-and-a-half years later he suffered another mental breakdown and was back out on the streets. Tom stayed in a winter shelter in Shepherd’s Bush for nine months before moving into a halfway house in Norwood – which is where he finally started to get proper mental health support.
This was the turning point for Tom, who pushed on to get a job with Connex (now known as Govia Thameslink) in 2001 working on the gate line in Victoria station where he quickly got promoted to team leader.
In 2005 he got a job in the station’s control point where he has worked ever since. “Having that stability of the halfway house to eventually get me housed in Thornton Heath in 2001 gave me roots,” Tom said. “Something changed within me.
“My family used to call it a self-destruct button where I’d finally get stable and then implode. A lot of my confidence that has grown over the years has come from working here. This job requires you to be extremely confident”
Tom has pushed on with his career with his job role focused on controlling customer boards and screens at Victoria station to provide real-time information. In recent years he has undergone cognitive behavioural therapy to help him understand the underlying issues causing his problems and create tools to deal with them.
Now aged 57, Tom believes mental health support is the key to ensuring homeless people remain off the streets once they’re rehoused.
“In some homeless shelters there was support where staff offered one-to-ones, but in a lot of them it was just a bed,” Tom added. “There were so many people there suffering from really bad issues with no support at all.
“This meant a lot of people had drug issues as they didn’t want to deal with their everyday issues. These are normal people, they’re not what other people see. People seem to have this view of what a homeless person is, what the person looks like, and it’s simply not the case.
“There are people out on the streets who want to be out on the streets, that’s a fact, but the majority are out there for no fault of their own.
“The majority have tipped that little thin line between stable and homeless. They’ve just come on hard times and suffer because of it.”
Tom concluded: “If anyone is struggling from issues you’ve had in the past, one of the most important things you can do is talk to somebody about it. This stops it from becoming a controlling factor in your life.”
