Entries by Mayday Trust

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 9 of 9: Being Strength-Based

“When you feel bad, you don’t need someone to confirm it. You need someone to see a glimmer of someone else or something else and you need to know they have seen it then you can start to see it yourself. That is strength-based working for me – making that glimmer shine a bit brighter.” […]

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 8 of 9: The System

“Many people I’ve worked with talked about their situations as their fault. But you know what? Most of the time it was the system that failed them. We failed them. That’s hard to face up to.” “What we get to do is build relationships, learn and understand people. I genuinely think by having different conversations, […]

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 7 of 9: Relationships Reduce Risk

“What we get to do is build relationships, learn and understand people. I genuinely think by having different conversations, people are actually safer.”   *Trigger Warning: Reference to Suicide. Practices surrounding risk assessment and how that connected to services delivered was one area identified by practitioners as needing some further thought. Practitioners understood why organisations […]

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 6 of 9: Why Don’t You Just Fix It?

“Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I’m like ‘oh my god, what do I do? How do I help?’ Then I end up trying to fixing things. It never ends well.” Practitioners explained that often the people they worked with had an expectation that they would do things for them and ‘fix’ situations. Having strength-based conversations that […]

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 5 of 9: Housing

“When it comes to sitting down to talk about tenancy and move ons… the council say, here’s your place, you’re taking it. If you don’t take it, you’ll be back on the streets again, and there’s no leeway, no negotiation.” In cases where organisations provided both housing management and support, practitioners talked about how hard […]

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 4 of 9: The Wrong Impression

“What do you do? You just sit there while you’re being paid… having a cup of coffee? But of course, it’s not just having a cup of coffee. That’s the point of connection or contact with people… it’s everything else that’s going on between you in that time, you know?” “I actually find, that because […]

Wisdom from Strength-Based Working 3 of 9: Survival

“It’s all about funding. Our organisation has a great heart. It wants to do good work and wants to help people and it needs money to do that… But there’s all this push and pull from funders.” Practitioners shared that even if their organisations really wanted to embrace strength-based work, they felt that the pressure […]