With you for the journey: Helping Hands Community Outreach Project

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Helping Hands work within the wider Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council area in Northern Ireland. We provide a holistic service for beneficiaries from furniture provision to counselling services. There is no one particular need that we are addressing as an organisation. We have developed a range of services to provide a holistic support system and enable us to support as many people as possible, through areas such as prayer support, furniture, food, clothing provision, emergency heating, counselling, pastoral care, befriending, mentoring, CV preparation, budgeting advice, training (through operational café and workshop), and volunteering opportunities. Our goal is to journey with people regardless of the challenges that they are facing.

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Our space is open five days a week to provide consistency of support to those in need within our community, with those seeking support able to access wraparound services to give them the best possible opportunity of overcoming the challenges they are facing.

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We are engaging with hundreds of people every week, many come for targeted support and then we won’t see them again. However, many also start a journey with us that can last months and years. John (not his real name) is a great example of how our services work in practice and how the wraparound approach we provide is so important.

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John had alcohol addiction, and over a number of years we journeyed with him, firstly by enabling him to receive professional addiction support through nearby facilities. During this time John made some great strides, and for a number of months when he was discharged, he was doing really well. However, a number of relapses meant that we had to have a conversation with him regarding returning to rehabilitation. Through intervention with doctors, the addictions unit and with John himself we were able to arrange for an old person's home to accommodate John for a longer period of time and this facility was located further away from home which took away the familiarity. Over the next two years John lived in this facility, however, we did not just leave him there to ‘get better’.

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We knew that he would need us once he was discharged, and we believed that it was important for him to feel that connection during his stay there. Therefore, one of our volunteers travelled the two-hour round trip to collect him twice a week and bring him to our complex where he was able to volunteer with us for the day and then go back to his parents’ house for dinner, after which the volunteer would bring him back that evening. This lasted for around two years, during which time John made fantastic strides and began to be able to engage with us in deeper ways he hadn’t been able to before.

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Over the past number of years John has gone from strength to strength, through volunteering with us every day he has been able to maintain a structure to his life. He is now managing a budget, has recently passed his driving test and is now saving for a car!

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We have so many stories like John’s, of people who have visited our space, engaged with us and been able to turn their lives around and integrate back into the community as a result.