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Moving on... Made possible by Justlife

  • 2 min read |
  • Posted by Justlife
  • On 14 February 2012
Justlife has helped another service user move on to new accommodation. We started working with Tim* 6 months ago when he moved into one of the local emergency bed and breakfast's. Over the months we have helped Tim address his chronic alcoholism through the SMART recovery programme and supportive one-to-one guidance sessions. Workshops in art and cooking have helped him connect with others and build skills and the drop-in lunches have given him more opportunity to talk and socialise.About 3 months ago, we found a space in supported housing for Tim, helped him make this transition and continued to support him and address his issues. Last week Tim came to Justlife pleased that he had secured a tenancy with a local housing association. This was an exciting opportunity, but he was only given 5 days notice to move on from furnished and supported housing into the new empty flat. With no means of transport, no furniture and very little money the hope of him being able to move on by himself was slim. This highlighted to us a gap in the system. Tim was doing so well and this stressful situation could have pushed him back to the start.Justlife stepped in to make his home move possible. Matt Lloyd, Justlife project worker took a day to move Tim's possessions and collect free and low cost household items from Mustard Tree, The Wesley Project and other charities around the city. Tim is a recovering alcoholic and his first port of call in this sudden and difficult circumstance would have been the bottle, but instead Tim is now settling into his new home well and extremely grateful for the help that we gave.Tim's exact words were: "I'd be on my arse and given up if it wasn't for you." But, we cannot do this for every client. There is a gap in the system and although we will try to help service users make this transition wherever possible, we do not have the capacity to do this every time.Justlife is putting together Tim's story as a case study, which can be used to address this problem with the housing and homelessness sector.* Name changed
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