My time with Changing Lives today was again spent on the frontline rather than in central office. I met with Claire, an employee in the women's services at Changing Lives, to get to know about the work she does, before joining in with a drop-in session for GAP (Girls are Proud).
GAP works with women who have previously been involved in, or are still involved in, sex work, or women and girls who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. Changing Lives offers a drop-in service every Friday in which women already involved in the services can come along and enjoy activities such as baking and jewellery-making as well as getting to know other service users and getting support from employees. I found the environment very open and friendly, and could see, even in the short amount of time I spent with Claire and the women, that the way the project is ran is highly beneficial in supporting and encouraging the service users. So much so, that the structure of the client journey used by Changing Lives and GAP is being researched academically and spread around the country, taught to similar organisations.
My role in today's drop-in was to be a source of contact for the service users: someone for them other than employees of Changing Lives to chat to. I also assisted Claire and her co-workers with preparing the activity for today and then tidying up afterwards.
As well as realising how important the work that Changing Lives carries out is today, I was also able to appreciate the vital role PR and Communications play. It not only promotes the work of the charity to the general public, stakeholders and donators, it also helps to inform potential service users about the help that is available to them. This will inform the editing process of my project when I head back to the office on Monday; although (potential) service users are unlikely to read an impact report of a charity, the text I am producing can be reproduced in leaflets and blog posts in the future, which they may access. Also, I may be creating some separate media work next week if my project is finished before Thursday, and again service users may access this. Therefore I will be mindful of the service users I have encountered in the past two days and how was best to share ideas with them as I write up any further communications.
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