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A trainee serving a meal in the Handcrafted kitchen
Kelly’s Story

A Multi-Agency Approach

Many of the people we work with are engaging with multiple different services so we use a multi-agency approach to plan our support. In many cases, it is our community support and activities, alongside our approach of empowering people which is valuable in this joined-up working.

Kelly has a range of complex mental health needs. She firstly engaged through our workshops as she was socially isolated, but we provided her housing as she was about to be made homeless. She has complex mental health needs and is closely supported by a Care Co-ordinator and Psychologist.

Kelly has also suffered a significant physical injury, and we were able to adapt our support to her, in co-ordinating her recovery and rehabilitation in hospital and later with physiotherapists. We have thus been able to support her back into employment as a delivery driver.

Image depicting someone helping another person up a mountain

Testimonials

There are countless challenges and barriers between our Fairchance service users and a healthy, productive and satisfying life.

We often use the term ‘chaotic lifestyle’ to describe the multitude of issues they face, and we contrast this lifestyle with an ideal that is secure, positive, stable and fulfilling. Often people looking in on the lifestyles of our service users find them intimidating, disorientating and full of risk – it should be no surprise that the same is true the other way around. For our service users who are looking into employment, education and stable accommodation, what they often see is a very unfamiliar culture and environment that they are unable to navigate.

Handcrafted helps to bridge this gap. It’s a middle ground between work and leisure where our service users are building confidence, self-esteem, working relationships, responsibilities, a sense of achievement. As a natural consequence of this and armed with the skills necessary to make this transition our service users are developing goals and ambitions and making plans for the futures that they are beginning to see as a reality for themselves.

Joe K, Fair Chance Project, Oasis Aquila Housing