Dean — Breaking Britain

Dean

Dean grew up in Barnsley. He had several different jobs before his father got him work down the local pit. Heroin arrived in the town around the same time. When the pit closed he started taking the drug on a regular basis, but it wasn’t until his redundancy money ran out that he realised he was addicted. He moved to Keighley to try and get away from it.

Vicki and Dean have been together for several years now. Vicki also used to be a regular heroin user. Heroin is a blight on many families in Keighley - the jobs go and the dealers move in. When you've got nothing to do, heroin fills the space: getting the money for it, taking it, coming down from it and then going out again trying to get the cash for the next hit. Vicky and Dean are desperate to leave that behind and have been working hard to bring up their two children, James and Bailey. Save the Children and Social Services have been very active in supporting them and helping them with housing and money issues.

Dean is the main carer and is totally dedicated to bringing up his two boys in a loving and caring environment. This he does by the bucketload and he's a bit of a hero down at the Children’s Centre because of it. As far as jobs go, Dean’s applied for 250 over the last year. Not one company returned any correspondence with him. Unfortunately Dean and Vicki have split up but both still share the childcare.

Dean, Vicky and the kids outside their home. Dean has put a lot of time and effort into creating a beautiful garden for the family. It's a strong part of his and Vicki's wish to create a new heroin-free life for themselves.

“My name is Dean Hindmarsh. I’ve got 2 sons. I grew up in Barnsley. I left school in 1988 and went straight to work for my friend’s mum, in her pub, as a waiter. The wages weren’t very good so I did a bit of working away at Butlins. It were while at Butlins that I got some work at pit with my father who rung me up and said he’d got some work for me. I worked there for about 4 years…”

James playing on the neighbours tampoline. There are many young families living in the local area. Many of the kids play together.

“Just before I started working, that’s when heroin first ever came into Barnsley, and I tried it with a group of friends that I grew up with and it just made me violently ill. From ‘92 to ‘96 my friends had gone from the point where I was with just trying it, to being fully addicted to the substance…”

“When I finished in the pit, I got back in with these friends and that’s when I went back to start using heroin. It took me a couple of years to realise what it was like because it were, I got the money to get I was doing which was heroin everyday. When the money run out that’s when It hit me that I needed this substance to function. When you wake up and you are addicted to heroin, all you can think about is ‘heroin, money, where?’ And that’s it, you’re off. Until you’ve succeeded in purchasing, your heroin…”

Dean working on the back garden. It's part of his plan to create a turfed garden for the kids to play in.

“Where you’ll end up when you abuse substances is prison or worse. If you’ve got nothing in your life, which is what you’ll have if you use heroin, it’ll take everything away from you. Then, its like an uphill struggle, you’ve got to replace your clothes, replace your respect, you’ve got to replace your family. You’ve got to build these bridges back because of what you’ve allowed heroin to do...”

Dean’s video.

“When you’ve abused heroin, basically you’ll know in your mind that if you use it again it will take all those feelings away, completely, which is what it does and that’s when the vicious circle starts again…”

“I met my children’s mum, Vicky, at a place where they’d sent me through the job centre to go and improve me CV and everything else. And we managed to conceive our first son after a few weeks of being together, our James, and he was born on the 14th May 2009...”

“We were at hospital for a few days because Vicky was on the methadone programme and obviously the child that’s inside a person that’s on the methadone programme, that child gonna be withdrawing from that substance when they leave the mother…”

“Social services contacted us and said they would prefer us to put him in voluntary foster care, which is where the parents make a conscious decision that the best thing for their child is to be put into foster care. We stopped using from that day, purely clean, and then one day we, its silly, we, we relapsed…”

“We went through all our savings, you know everything went. Social services found out and I think they saw that we did not want to be in this situation even though we had put ourselves in this situation, but that’s just another thing that heroin is, that’s what it does to you. When you’re afraid to take, for us to work so hard, to get our child back, for that to creep in and let it risk all that again, it just shows how powerful that substance is…”

“When I’ve been clean […] you are always fighting to put things into your life to try and keep that life away from heroin. And then what heroin will do to you is, if you get to a low point […] it just tells you if you take me, I can make everything seem rosy and you’re not feeling this depression anymore…”

James getting a bedtime story. Dean or Vicki always read the kids a story before bedtime. “If you’re willing to change your life there is things in place that.. you can access things. If you’re willing to make that move then there is people willing to stand by you and then give you that push and then that helping hand in the right direction. So, thank you from me, Bailey and James.”