Community volunteering can take up a lot of time, work and effort – is it worth it?
There will always be some residents who have issues and problems but, you know, they still need a roof over their head. A lot of our properties are one-bedroom flats, so clearly among those residents will be people who have been isolated by life events or mental health problems.
I always want to ask whether we, as tenants, can be an advocate for that person? Can we be the more approachable person, the one without a lanyard? Obviously some problems may be too complex for us, but there are times and places when we might be the right kind of mediator. The point is that we all need to work together to deliver a better community, and even as tenants we have a real part to play, not least because we live here and know the place and the people better than anyone.
Do you ever despair about whether some are beyond help?
Everybody should have an opportunity to be the best person they can be. And even if they fall at the first hurdle, we should help them back up again. So, for instance, we have this one young person who managed to stop substance abuse during COVID, partly because of our support. We dropped off food and regularly chatted through the window, just letting this person know that we were there. Then we helped them access a mental health course. Now they are trying to help others; volunteering for suicide prevention initiatives as a local mental health champion, helping at the food bank, helping at our regular veterans’ breakfasts.
That speaks volumes, doesn’t it? Just seeing someone supporting the community that supported them makes me more determined than ever that we make sure others get that chance to be a better person. These are the type of people you really want in your community. Even if you’ve only had one success out of 10 people or 20 people, that one person is enough.
Are there other lives you’ve seen change because their community was able to help?
A resident came to our support group one day last year when we were in the middle of COVID. He was visibly shaking. He eventually told us that he’d spent 20 years in and out of prison since he was a teenager. That day he was due to sign for his tenancy and he was terrified – he didn’t even know if he wanted it. He’d never had a place of his own in his life, he’d never paid a bill, he had no idea how to budget. Sofa-surfing was all he knew how to do.
We talked him into going to get the keys and then got him in touch with a tenancy sustainment officer from Six Town Housing who helped him sort out bills and budgets and a bank account – something else he’d never had before. We told him we’d support him, we’d help him get a bit of furniture. We did all that and now, nearly two years down the line, he has a home and a dog. He’s even found a girlfriend. And he’s not back in prison.

We wanted to create a place where older people could engage with the younger community and really build up that trust that’s gone missing between the generations.

It can’t all have been plain sailing …
Well, we did learn to live with plants being stolen from the flower beds because we found the more we broadcast how terrible it was, the worse it got. When we changed to thinking ‘well, we’ll just quietly put another plant in’, nothing happened. The attention was gone, the plants stopped disappearing.
Part of the point of the community garden was making a place where older people could engage with the younger community and really build up that trust that’s gone missing. I wanted to work out how we could move on from the first thought many of us have, that children are just there to cause problems. Many of our youngsters have had difficult lives and many are the second or third generation in their families really struggling with life problems.
Last year we put a friendly bench in the community garden. As you can imagine, within the first two weeks a few local youngsters had drawn all over it. My husband simply cleaned it up. Our local community police officer had a gentle word with some of the youngsters. It stopped.
When older neighbours started to worry about the seat being a magnet for teenagers at night, we spoke to the youngsters. They just wanted a nice place to meet up – there was nowhere else quite like it locally. And now the older people say hello and ask how they are as they go by. It’s all about mutual trust.
What about your MBE – how do you feel about it?
The email about the MBE came through when I was doing my shift at the food bank and I thought ‘Oh, that’s a good joke.’ When I read it again in the evening, it looked quite official and I thought, these people seem to know a lot about me – maybe it’s real. It’s been a surprise, but it’s also been wonderful, though I would have preferred it to have been a group honour. Since we can’t quite do it that way, I’ve accepted it for all the volunteers, not just for myself. We’re a team.