Doorway's "Moving On" Process

In 2007 a grant from the Chippenham Borough Lands Charity enabled Doorway to recruit a Support Services Manager, Karen Moore, who now works one to one with guests in the drop-in and has piloted training for volunteers to enable guests to identify and work towards their personal goals. The pilot was based on a model pioneered by Lemos and Crane and described in their report ‘Dreams Deferred’.

Karen brings expertise in social work to the team – in particular working with learning disabilities and mental health issues. Since she was appointed we have been able to offer more in-depth one to one support to guests in the drop-ins. In the last year she has dealt with issues on a regular basis including: benefits, poor life skills, physical and mental health problems and relationship issues. During the year we also had 3 guests with particularly threatening and challenging behaviour and she was able to gain their confidence and establish ground rules so that they modified their behaviour. This meant that these guests who were excluded by other agencies and who had been served ASBOs were managed safely within the drop-in.

Moving On - The Pilot Scheme (May 2007 to November 2007)

With positive results from this limited pilot, we used the experience we gained to develop our own training, tailor-made for our own drop-in. Karen and a colleague have just finished delivering this training to 4 volunteers who will shortly commence work with their first ‘Moving On’ clients, fully supervised by professional paid staff.

Doorway’s Moving On Process

The aim of the process is for support workers to provide guests with a structured way to reflect on their lives and behaviour and to help guests to:

Not every guest even with the help of a support worker will be able to work their way through all stages of the process. Staff and guests can use the parts they think are relevant and helpful and which will help guests to make as much progress as they feel is appropriate for them.

Similarly, the process may raise issues and problems that are beyond the skills of the support worker and may highlight the need for professional help.

The process is in three stages:-

Guests are encouraged to reflect on and learn from the action that they have taken, so that the process would become self-reinforcing:

reflection – insight – decision – action – reflection – insight etc

It is important to remember that Doorway staff are not counsellors, therapists, mediators, GPs etc. We do not take on what we are not qualified to do or what we cannot cope with. We will always call a halt if we hit something beyond our remit and look for a appropriate specialist service.