Cost of Living & navigating services

Sacred Shed as a Holistic service:

Cost of Living is part of wellbeing:

Unfortunately in these modern times cost of living is a daily news topic & for many a daily worry & struggle.

Cost of living issues effect our emotional wellbeing & having an awareness of what support services are out there can feel truly liberating & a massive relief & help.

I count myself very lucky to have offered to be part of a Cost of Living project & I got to work alongside Citizens Advice for it's duration.

We learnt so much from each others services & I believe both services really gained a deeper understanding of the support our respective services offered and that in turn helped the people who accessed both our services. I was working for a mental health charity at the time & gave a synopsis of how the co produced project felt so valuable to both the services & those that were referred in to the project. 

The collaborative way of working during the projects duration allowed me to support clients to Citizens Advice appointments that they may well not have attended without the physical presence of a staff member they knew & trusted. 

We also delivered several workshops during & after the project ended & these were designed to help Citizens Advice incorporate conversation opportunities & wellbeing tools for staff into their staff supervision and general work culture.

The project also allowed the services to develop close professional working relationships with the staff within those services & complete some truly joined up working, I.e. the 2 services communicated fully & the referred clients really benefited from this cross working. 

We established referral forms & consent to share GDPR forms & it is a subject I remain passionate about (& actually gave a talk on the project at a work AGM - I agreed to this due to the pride & passion I felt & had not given a talk to so many people before in my life. There were approx 50 staff in the room & 100+ watching online).

HELP IS OUT THERE.

There are many community initiatives, church-run organisations, council projects & grants & opportunities to access free/ low cost fresh food as well as food banks & community cafes. And finding out the extent of the help out there was a truly heartening part of the project.

I understand the difficulties in navigating these services & also the emotion that can be involved, of feeling undeserving, overwhelmed or even shame & lack of entitlement. There are still so many people not claiming the benefits they are entitled to & struggling. 

I love helping shine a light on the many ways help can be accessed - from reduced council tax, unclaimed benefits, free physical wellbeing services & food waste, food bank & furniture bank projects & a variety of vouchers, discount cards for carers & grants & more. 

I don't know them all, but I know where to start looking & where to ask. 

So this is also part of the Sacred Shed service as the overwhelm of information about what is out there is very real for us all. But I can help point people in the right direction.

 **The issue with so so many services is that they change so often & change their remit/criteria/lose funding/new ones appear etc. It's why an up to date database can feel impossible to offer, but some local services do try & provide this to help reduce the overwhelm of where to even begin to look for help**