Advocacy Services @ Castleland

As part of our continuous effort to improve advocacy reach for people in our area, we’ve been forming collaborative relationships with local support agencies to run free surgeries alongside our popular and well attended FoodShare project every Wednesday.

The aim with this has been to create a neutral convenient location for both attendees and organisations that helps reduce the barriers that may otherwise interfere with those two parties connecting with each other.

There can sometimes be a considerable wait for service users to collect their Food, which is why we also continue to provide a “Warm Space” waiting room alongside the project.

It is hoped that during this waiting period and with increased familiarity over time, that people will feel more comfortable / willing to simply pop across the hall to a support service surgery, if they would otherwise not be willing to attend a more formal workshop or support group.

So far the feedback from both the attendees and organisations alike has been very positive, so much so that we’ve added extra rooms to accommodate a wider variety of services that cover different problems / target different audiences.

Below are some of the outreach services that are regularly running each Wednesday from the Centre:

CAVDAS exists to ensure that every individual receives the necessary support, information, and advice concerning their own or someone else’s drug and alcohol use.

They adopt a ‘No wrong door’ approach, meaning that regardless of how and when individuals reach out with concerns about drug and alcohol issues, the organization is equipped to provide appropriate help.

Part of their arsenal to combat these issues is to perform outreach alongside Castleland’s FoodShare and other services to provide confidential support, safe distribution of sterile needles, syringes and all the equipment required for safer injecting.

They also can admnister / provide Naloxone, which rapidly reverse an opiate overdose and can quickly bring someone’s breathing back to normal when it has slowed or stopped because of an opioid, such as certain prescription medication or heroin, from their accompanying safe space “Tim” the Harm Reduction Van.

Every age group can attend the outreach, contact them directly or through a professional referral.

The Citizens Advice service helps people resolve their legal, money and other problems by providing free, independent and confidential advice, and by influencing policymakers.

A face to face, generalist advice service run from Castleland. This includes detailed and specific advice on the issue(s) affecting the client. It may include assistance to the client in completion of forms or drafting of correspondence, the provision of sample letters or other self-help material and guidance or one-off negotiations on the client’s behalf (and with appropriate authorisation).

The service can cover casework activity such as ongoing correspondence and ongoing negotiation with third parties too.

Communities For Work is actively working to strengthen its connection with the community by providing opportunities for community members to participate in shaping the organization’s activities. They recognize the importance of both online and traditional engagement methods, striving for inclusivity and accessibility.

To that end they have run a regular outreach service at Castleland tackling a variety of different work related topics and providing advice and onsite assistance to help get people back to work, improve their work prospects and deal with work related issues.

St Athan Clothes Bank started as an idea from Paul Carr’s son Callum, who in 2021 decided to collect shoes and coats from locals for redistribution to people who needed them. Fast foward a few months and they managed to get a permanent base in the Gathering Place at St Athan and the aspiring project has only grown from there.

Now thanks to a Big Lottery Grant they have been able to expand their service to allow for locations outside of their primary area. One of the new locations picked was Castleland and at the end of 2023 we piloted a scheme alongside our warm space which went extremely well – so much so we decided to give them a place every week for our attendees to access.

We have also had infrequent pop up advice surgeries from Eon Energy and Welsh Water to give advice on the different opportunities there are for saving money aswell as subsidies and financial assistance schemes available to customers that they may not be aware of.

Overall, frequenters of the centre have been quite pleased with the support services they’ve been able to access and we too have been happy that we can help in whatever ways we can to bring those services closer to the people that need them.

We are always looking for ways to improve our services and are open to suggestions for adding other advocacy groups to run alongside our community projects as well as ways we can improve those collaborations.

The Castleland Team