“I can’t go on like this.”

They’re not words you ever want to hear a friend say. And yet, when Steve uttered them to me a couple of years ago, they felt like the break of dawn.

Steve is, among many other things, homeless and an alcoholic. When we first met, many months previously, he had been somewhat uncommunicative, but had since grown in confidence and trust. Now, for the first time, he was asking for help.

It was a moment of flickering hope that has been brutally extinguished by a system that has frustrated and failed him at every turn since. Because Steve’s just been sent to jail – and so scandalous has his treatment been that imprisonment may be the best thing that has happened to him for years.

I met Steve five years ago when he began sleeping on the porch of the church I used to attend; he was in his mid-40s and had recently been released from prison. He had never lived independently, and was clearly a man with complex needs. Many of us at the church grew to know and like Steve. He showed great care for others, and displayed an endearing wit: he’d describe the fruit he’d picked and stored in the crevices of the porch as his “ornaments”.

Steve could be aggressive when drunk, but was typically benign and the most committed churchgoer in the parish. We treated him not as a client or patient or problem, but as a person, and he respected that. So when he mustered the courage to seek assistance in turning his life around, we did all we could.

Our resulting experiences were akin to being punched repeatedly in the soul. Here’s a brief summary. He needed help for his chest pains, so we contacted a GP surgery. “No, we can’t help,” they said. “He needs to register with us.” What information do you need? “His address.” He doesn’t have one. “Then we can’t see him.” It took a formal complaint to the practice manager to get this vulnerable, sick man an appointment.

The benefits system was similarly ill-equipped to deal with Steve. He had no chance of navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy and alphabet soup of initialisms. Attempts to get the money to which he was entitled were stalled by the need for official documents, of which he had none. After weeks of struggle, the benefits were approved – but were accessible only by using a card, a device with which Steve was unfamiliar. So he’d need help just to get the money. No one official offered support with budgeting, either, so he had no idea how to manage it.

This was institutionalised buck-passing. Without our group from the church, he’d have been entirely alone.

Then there was the nausea-inducing carousel of mental health care. He didn’t tick enough boxes for any formal diagnosis; well-intentioned efforts were made to admit him to hospital, but he wasn’t ill enough. Because of his alcoholism, no hostel would take him; but without the stability and shelter afforded by a hostel, he had little chance of recovery. Mental health services wouldn’t help until he’d recovered from the alcoholism; but the alcoholism was bound up with his mental health issues. There was institutionalised buck-passing – and without our group from the church trying to help him, he’d have been entirely alone.

And then, 18 months ago, the very church in which he’d placed his trust evicted him. Some members of the church have continued their efforts but this has been made harder by the difficulty in knowing where he was. And now? He’s behind bars.

Officially, Steve’s crime was being drunk and disorderly on various occasions over the past few months, and failing to attend court hearings. But the system has set him up for this fall. Alcoholism and a chaotic life on the streets would make many of us drunk and disorderly and miss court hearings. In truth, his crime has been quite different: to be insufficiently dangerous to himself or to others to get the help he needs and wants, but to be insufficiently capable of running his life independently to get the help he needs and wants.

Steve’s story shames modern Britain. It’s a tale that exposes the fragility of the social infrastructure upon which we rely.