Profile

Professional History

The Terrence Higgins Trust - 1983 - 1988

This section is a purely personal and subjective account of my experiences whilst at the Terrence Higgins Trust. The Trust was set and run in these early days by gay men in response to friends dying from AIDS and largely because of the failure of the statutory health and social services to meet our needs and those of our friends and families.

I joined the Terrence Higgins Trust in October of 1983 some two months after a public meeting had been held in the upstairs room of the gay pub The London Apprentice over by Liverpool Street station. I took the first call on the official THT Aids helpline on February 14th 1984. The phone line was open between 8 and 10pm at first. We were housed in a pokey room in a converted warehouse just off the Gray's Inn Road in Central London.

This line was set up after a number of gay men had given over large parts of their home, and indeed life, to the work that THT and its small number of volunteers was increasingly asked to do. In fact I remember that both the office costs and the furniture that we had were all donated.

I also worked directly with people with AIDS as a buddy. During this time I worked with social service departments, hospitals and hospices. About a year or so later I became responsible for the induction of new volunteers and then the public relations officer. The following photographs are just a few of the highlights of that time.