CMM is thrilled to share the stories of two outstanding individuals. Firstly, Christina Earl, Head of Innovation and Business Development at Surrey Choices, tells the story of her colleague Karen Breakspear, winner of the Compassion Award. Secondly, we hear from David Higham, Founder and Chief Executive of The Well Communities CIC, who won the Leadership Award.
Karen Breakspear, Surrey Choices
One of the simplest, but most powerful of Surrey Choices’ values is ‘be kind’. Our nominee and winner of the Compassion Award at the Markel 3rd Sector Care Awards 2022, Karen Breakspear, really demonstrates this value, along with all our core values. Surrey Choices is a local authority trading company owned by Surrey County Council who provide a range of services for disabled people from Shared Lives to day activities in the community.
Above and beyond expectations
Karen works for our award-winning Supported Employment Service (EmployAbility), which helps people find their perfect job matches, whether that be full-time, paid work or a few hours per week volunteering. Karen works just 20 hours a week, but in that time, she often ranks amongst the top performers in the Supported Employment Service team against others who are working full time (37.5 hours). In the year of her nomination, Karen achieved 30 outcomes for her job seekers – five paid jobs, 18 work experience placements and seven voluntary placements.
Karen was even able to continue to find opportunities during lockdown. Karen offers every single job seeker a personalised service, along with building extraordinarily strong relationships with other stakeholders. Karen continues to work with employers, jobcentres, families and other professionals. She shows creativity and a commitment to breaking down barriers to work and inclusion and is a real inspiration to her colleagues and the people we support.
‘Karen Breakspear is a phenomenal individual and one of the most kind-hearted and loving people I know. I have known Karen for about three to four years and throughout that time she has been extremely supportive to me in all of my employment endeavours. From changing jobs to dealing with employment paperwork, not to mention her assistance in helping me find stable and secure work during COVID-19 so that I might avoid being furloughed. Karen Breakspear is an extraordinary individual who we are all better for knowing.’ A jobseeker supported by EmployAbility.
Creating lasting relationships
However, Karen’s ability to form such strong relationships is only part of the reason for her nomination. During the pandemic, Karen volunteered to work additional hours with Surrey Choices’ emergency weekend and evening respite service – Flexi-Choices. Supporting people whose family were in crisis due to lockdown and at risk of family breakdown. For this work, Karen had to adapt her skills as she worked with a range of people – from those with very complex learning disabilities to others who were just struggling emotionally to cope with lockdown.
One young lady was demonstrating risky behaviours, mainly relating to drugs and relationships. Karen was not judgmental but raised her self-esteem and suggested alternative lifestyle choices. It was challenging to encourage her to engage, but Karen was persistent and consistent. Eventually, the young lady built a trusted relationship with Karen and started to change her behaviours including looking for paid work and finding a regular partner.
‘[She] is more engaged with Karen than all other professionals involved in her care. It is clear that the client’s welfare is at the heart of everything she does and her dedication to her work is obvious.’ Mental health social worker.
We would like to thank the Markel 3rd Sector Care Awards for allowing us to celebrate some of the amazing work that happens every day in social care but is often unnoticed. Even in these tough times, compassion in social care is essential at all levels and it is a good reminder to us all to embed this into our practice, as it is not only desirable, but really does improve outcomes for everyone.
About Christina Earl
Christina has a passion for helping disadvantaged people find their place in society. She has influenced and grown services such as Supported Employment and Shared Lives. As Chair of the employment workstream of Surrey’s Autism Strategy, she has improved outcomes for autistic people and has a particular interest in young people’s services. Christina has over 30 years’ experience of senior management in the private, public and charity sectors.
David Higham, The Well Communities CIC
I left prison for the last time in 2007. Since then, I have dedicated my life to supporting others with drug and alcohol addiction through both voluntary and paid employment. Seeing a big gap locally in the support for people leaving prison with an addiction, I decided to set up The Well. The first hub was launched in Lancaster in 2012, and a further four sites quickly followed in Lancashire and Cumbria.
Shaping effective recovery
The Well reflects my vision of what recovery services should look like – inclusive, non-judgemental, inspirational and effective. It focuses on peer mentoring; my view is that long-term recovery can happen through the therapeutic value of one person with lived experience helping another. I set up The Well with my own money and with no blueprint to follow. Instead, I used my experience, vision and determination to create what has now become a leading provider of recovery services in the region.
I often say that now is my time to ‘give back’ to society after taking from it for so many years.
The Well Communities CIC is a peer-led organisation that provides a range of services and initiatives to support mental health and addiction recovery. The organisation’s aim is to minimise the harm caused by problematic alcohol and substance misuse. Our key beneficiaries are drug and alcohol users and offenders, individuals experiencing mental health difficulties and their families. We provide housing, hospital and street outreach, therapeutic programmes and activities, ‘Through the Gate’ support and peer-run community hubs. Our community hubs offer people a chance to create a new future for themselves, co-produced with people who have successfully turned their lives around after seeking help.
Successful partnership working
In the past 10 years, we have co-produced various workstreams with statutory and Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) partners to identify (by determining community need through boots-on-ground, locality-based community activism) and address health inequalities in cohorts with historically complex needs.
Our model is a whole-system approach with lived experience at the very heart of the hub. Much of our work also involves local placed-based community activism, including initiatives such as a social supermarket and food growing sovereignty schemes. A multi-thematic delivery ensures that there is no adoption of a one size fits all approach. A boots-on-ground approach links individuals with ground level needs with services, avoids missed appointments, provides genuine lived experience peer-to-peer support, creates mutual aid capacity (where currently there is none) and fosters long-term appropriate and relevant engagement.
The Well brings together people who are in stable, abstinent recovery from substance misuse to use their lived experience of addiction to support and help others. The Well also provides activities and support for people who are keen to move out of addiction or who have recently done so and are struggling.
Grow from within
Over 70% of individuals who use The Well’s services have histories of criminal offending and prison. This is also reflective of our staff who have similar histories. It is this personal and professional experience that helps us to achieve our objectives.
Currently the Well Communities CIC employs 64 staff, of which 60% have used our services. The Well has a grow your own model, meaning that the very people we support will be our next volunteers and staff. 60% of the staff at The Well have come through our support services. This enables us to always listen to the people we serve, but more so, they are the very people that drive the organisation as they shape, design and deliver our services.
David Higham, Founder, The Well Communities CIC
David left prison for the last time in 2007. Since then, he has dedicated his life to supporting others with drug and alcohol addiction through both voluntary and paid employment. Seeing a big gap locally in the support for people leaving prison with an addiction, David decided to set up The Well.
The first hub was launched in Lancaster in 2012, and a further four sites quickly followed in Lancashire and Cumbria.