The warmer weather has brightened many people spirits! However, we are still seeing lots of new sign ups and unfortunately many more homeless people presenting. As always, we are working hard with P3, Solace, Gloucester City Mission and others, to help people with their varying needs. 

If you believe that your service could help in any way, we would love to hear from you!

Support at the Cavern is a lifeline for so many vulnerable and disadvantaged adults in our community. We are open 365 days a year from 6pm-11pm just behind the Cavern at 56 Westgate Street, Gloucester. If you would like any further information, please feel free to contact the Support at The Cavern Lead at [email protected]

---

Endings are difficult for most people, and can be even harder for people whose complex emotional needs mean that they struggle with attachment and trust. For our trainees, coming to the end of the Anchor programme after such an intensive year of relationship building can be particularly difficult. At the Anchor, the fact that the programme will end is acknowledged from the beginning: we always taper down our contact hours with the trainee in the last 4-5 months, so that the person has time to adjust to the change, and to focus on what life will look like without us. We cannot prevent this sense of loss, so often we just need to sit with the trainee in their pain, and help them to recognise the skills that they will be taking with them as they set out on the next part of their life journey. Sometimes it can feel to the trainee as if they are going backwards in the last few weeks, when in fact it is part of their grieving process. As they work through it, they start to come to terms with the loss, and with that comes a new readiness to step out into the next stage of life. 

This month we have one trainee who is struggling with the idea of ending the programme. Although she finds it painful, with her trainers she is finding positive ways to process this, including creating a beautiful scrapbook of everything she has done and learnt over the year. While she is understandably anxious about her next step in life, she is already doing things to manage her struggles that she could not have done a year ago, and has set the ball rolling for ongoing volunteering, education and developing her hobbies. At the Anchor we continue to believe in and encourage her as she processes this big life change.

---

This month Youth Support is celebrating its 1st birthday! We've had a wonderful team social to celebrate this, where we enjoyed some team building as well as the great weather. On the note of celebrations, one of our Youth Support workers, Angela, was recently named employee of the month!

We are currently working on our presence on social media including our welcoming video which should be available in the next month or so. As well as this, we want to make Youth Support more welcoming and fun for everyone, so if you have any ideas on how we can improve Youth Support please let us know. 

We have had some successful link ups from outside services such as the Recovery Team who have had a meeting in the Youth Support space with the Adult and Youth Support leads. They were very impressed how we run Support and they will be taking that back to their service users. Our deputy lead has also had another positive meeting with someone referred through Young Carers Gloucester and again this has been received well. 

We are happy that we are still having a steady flow of new sign ups, it's been lovely to see all these faces and personalities.