Two Mad Days!

We closed the week in Ben’s Centre last week with a bit of a bang! Thursday and Friday were two days that were full of risky incidents and managing the Centre was a bit of a challenge. You never know what each day will bring and often that’s good but it also keeps you on your toes. It’s also still quite a reality shock how quickly too an incident can happen. You realise at these times that we are under-staffed.At the moment in the Centre we are dealing with clients who not only are drinking but are using other substances and the combination is not good. It results in some bazaar behaviour and also increases the risk in the Centre. On Thursday we heard of an incident which had taken place outside the Centre which involved clients that were regulars with us. This meant that we had to talk to all the parties concerned and shut down all conversations about it. Also it meant we had to watch very carefully the clients that were involved to make sure the tensions didn’t spill out again. We managed to contain this but at the end of the day the staff felt as though they had been walking around with an unexploded bomb. Fortunately it didn’t go off! Friday came and this time we had a high number of clients who were intoxicated and a number who not only were intoxicated but had decided to top it up with something else. (Some pills etc.) We ended up having to stop any more clients coming in after lunch and managing the risk of those who we had in. We did manage the risk and no client was hurt or no further trouble broke out. It was hard work. The staff was very relieved it was Friday! This is all in a days work at Bens. We have our good days and then we have days that aren’t quite as good…to say the least!