Alice Leahy accepted an invitation from the Soroptomists International to speak in Rotherham, Yorkshire on March 23rd where she worked in the early Seventies. Alice also promoted TRUST’s latest book “With Trust in Place – Writing from the outside” at a signing in Waterstones in Sheffield during her brief visit.
Picture shows Alice with Anna Manson (left) and Margaret Graceson (right) who at 91 years is still an active member of the Soroptomists in Rotherham.
Following is text of Press Release issued by Soroptomists International to promote her visit:
Irish Writer and Champion of the Homeless with strong Yorkshire links to speak at Soroptomists International meeting in Rotherham on Tuesday March 23rd
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Irish writer and champion of the homeless, Alice Leahy, who has maintained strong links with Yorkshire since working here in 1971, has accepted an invitation to address the Rotherham branch of Soroptomists International on Tuesday 23rd March.
Well known in Ireland through her pioneering work in helping people who are homeless as Director of TRUST, an agency she founded in 1975 to provide health and social services for people who are homeless (www.trust-ireland.ie). Alice Leahy is also directly involved in awareness and education programmes to create greater understanding of the needs of people who find themselves excluded by society and has helped TRUST to become a highly effective agency for change in Ireland despite its relatively small size.
Alice will also be at Waterstones Book Shop, Orchard Square, Sheffield from 6.30pm Thursday 25th March to promote her new critically acclaimed book in Ireland “With Trust in Place”, which contains a collection of stories, essays and poems contributed from a cross section of well known and not so well known figures in Irish Society from a high court judge to a poet who is homeless on the theme of the outsider.
A nurse by profession who set up the first Intensive Care Unit of its kind in Ireland at the then Royal City of Dublin Hospital, Alice Leahy was also recently made an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.
