Good n Bad days!

We want our blog to give the people who read it every week a flavour of what takes place in Ben’s Centre. We want it to be an honest account of our good days and our not so good days. Working with Street Drinkers is not easy and we seem to take steps forward only to then find we are going backwards in some directions....or so it would seem.At the moment in the Centre we are having a time when we seem to be re-enforcing boundaries and having to address issues where clients would prefer us to turn a blind eye! We are certainly not very popular at the moment. It takes wisdom to know what issues to address in clients and what issues to leave for the time being. This last week has been quite difficult for the staff. We have a new shop at the corner of our street. It’s a retro clothing store called very attractively (!) Cow. It has given our clients something to look at and use the name very creatively towards the staff. Alongside this we have had clients being very angry and we have had to dodge a punch or two as well. Other clients have just been very abusive towards us. They do not want to face issues in their lives and attack often is the best form of defense. In the middle of all this you get a small ray of light as you see a few clients, and they are a few at the moment, wanting to move on and trying in their lovely way to encourage us and support us. They give us hope knowing that a few of them would have been in this position a few months ago. This time will pass we know but it’s not easy while you are in the transition period. Some clients will decide to not come in but there will be a number who know that all we are doing and saying is because we care….although on Friday we were beginning to wonder if we did! It’s a new week and we know that there is hope for everyone of our clients. We will work through some of these issues that aren’t good and we will see our clients take steps forward to change. Even when clients seem to go backwards this can be used as a spring-board to learn and keep going. So yes it’s hard working here sometimes but it’s this belief we have in every one of them that keeps us going and a weekend does a lot to your memory, especially at my age!