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Who We Support

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Open to everyone

Handcrafted is a community open to everyone. We work with some of the most marginalised people in society, regardless of their backgrounds.

Our trainees face multiple disadvantages such as homelessness, addictions, poor mental and physical health, long-term unemployment, offending history, fleeing domestic violence, and leaving local authority care. Many of them experience multiple of these needs which interact in complex ways.

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Priority Groups

Based on our experience of working in the North-East for the past 12 years, we have 4 key priority groups for whom we have developed specialist provision:

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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