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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue
35 |
November
2003 |
Supporting
People in the Community
Vivienne Hoyle is
the Senior Community Support Worker for THOMAS.
Our Floating Support Team has
been fully operational for three months now. Our offices are run from
Wellington St Johns, Blackburn. Our team is lead by three support workers and
myself. Our aims are to enable clients to live as independently as humanly
possible in the community. Our services range from budgeting skills to gaining
full time employment.
Four of our clients have been accepted at Plater
College in Oxford, whilst a client is attending Blackburn College on a welding
course. Another of our clients has just been given a lifelong learning award.
Another success story is a female client who has been accepted on a training
course, to work as a mentor in the prison service. From the 22 clients we
support this is a great success and we wish them well for the future.
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Our team has
worked extremely hard to build relationships with clients, who are often
difficult to work with. So far we have had an encouraging amount of success.
Word has got round in the local drug using community, about the number of
people who have succeeded in stabilising their lifestyles. The intensive
support offered from the team, is starting to pay dividends. We have also
developed and are maintaining links with other outside agencies, which is good,
our multiagency work is magnificent, and we are widely recognised in the
community, thus leading to a high number of referrals.
However and it
must be said that we do have clients that fall by the wayside. One client in
particular has recently been sent to prison. He remains in close contact with
us by post. An extract from his letter reads, "my sentence is flying by and I
don’t know why. Probably because I needed to get clean. As you said I need
a stint jail, and I did." He goes on to say "all the crew are doing a top job.
There are a lot of people out there who just don’t care. They think once a
smack head always a smack head, but not you and your team, and I have a lot to
thank you all for. Don’t worry about me, as this time I won’t let the
side down. I promise you with my hand on my heart" This client will be joining
our residential rehab immediately on release from prison.
I am
extremely proud of the clients on our programme and am equally proud of our
team, to gain respect you have got to give respect and there is a great deal of
respect between both parties. So to all our clients, keep up the hard work, you
have all achieved something over recent months, no matter how big or small, and
to my team of dedicated support workers, well done, you have each made a
difference in someone’s life.
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