A busy week

Last week was busy and very varied, with points of sadness, drama, frustration and some really good times…welcome to Bens!Victoria Hall had kindly offered to give us their harvest gifts, and had asked us if there was anything we would particularly like. We suggested gifts of marmite and marmalade would be useful. So our week began with lots of older people, often having struggled with very heavy bags, bringing us a LOT of marmite and marmalade. We are very grateful and it will be put to good use; but it did have a surreal moment or two as a steady flow of more senior people came depositing all the jars, mingling with all that was going on in the Centre! Monday ended with a meeting here in the Centre, a multi-partnership of representatives from the Police, Health, City and other organisations working to look together at the many issues that present with client group we work with. It was good to listen and hear the varied approaches to finding workable ways to deal with the problems that present themselves, and also to hear about some very positive initiatives taking place. It was sad too this week as we said goodbye to two loyal helpers at Bens. Firstly it was Maria, our admin lady. Maria has been such a help to our Centre in all the work she has done for us, not least our much improved filing system. Tuesdays will not seem the same without her, and also we said goodbye to Euan, our volunteer, who also came in on a Tuesday. Euan has been a lovely volunteer and a big help to us. We shall miss them both and wish them well for all their new plans for the future. It would not be Bens without Wendy having some project on the go for clients to try. We are attempting to fill one of our windows with our own small squares of ‘stained glass’. It has been very popular as it allows clients to express their individual creativity, and as there is no right or wrong way of doing them, client’s confidence has grown. As you can see they are very attractive and it has been fun doing them, and to cap it all Sue managed to do two!

The week ended with a bang, a serious incident with a client. Very sad and also a reminder to us all that we are dealing with clients who have serious addictions and sometimes choices are made that are not good ones. But all in all it was a week with more positive happenings than negative.