Category: Vanessa Place

St. Anne’s – Goodbye for now!

After what seems like a very short five weeks, my time at St. Anne’s has come to an end. I’ve settled in well and have a great relationship with the service users, so it seems almost too soon to be leaving!

The main aim of my project was to collect data on Spice use (more on that later), but during my time here I’ve also become involved in a lot more of the work that St. Anne’s does. I’ve helped to run the breakfast club every week, which was a great way to meet the clients and talk to them about my project. I was also part of service user involvement sessions, which are designed to allow people to have their say on how St. Anne’s is run and what sort of services it offers. This sense of involvement is at the core of St. Anne’s ethos; service users are encouraged to take an active role in changing their lives and addressing issues that affect them. It’s been really rewarding to see how some of the clients have managed to turn their lives around with the help of the staff.

Back to my project, then. Due to the nature of the work that St. Anne’s carries out and their client base, my data set is smaller than I’d hoped. However, it still offers an eye-opening and valuable insight into Spice use among the service users, which was the aim. It’s not possible to share too much on my blog (due to the confidential nature of the information) but what I can say is that a large volume of service users are dealing with the effects of Spice on a daily basis. This can be anything from blacking out, becoming anxious or aggressive, hearing voices, to witnessing the death of a close friend. I’ve been quite surprised and humbled by the honesty of the clients when we’ve been discussing Spice; the vast majority of people have fallen over themselves to help me get the information I needed. This has been collected into a report for the staff at St. Anne’s, and can hopefully be used as a tool to help them move forward in dealing with Spice use among their clients. The whole process has been fascinating, frustrating and (at times) even upsetting, but it’s been worth it.

I also focused a lot of my efforts on gathering information from the staff at St. Anne’s about their own experiences of Spice. The general mood was one of frustration; the staff have to deal with people who have taken Spice on a daily basis, and quite often these people can become aggressive, behave erratically, or just unresponsive. It’s really forming a barrier between clients and staff, preventing the latter from doing their job.

With this is in mind, I decided to run a service user involvement session for both clients and staff to discuss the findings of my project. The aim was to present what I’ve found to everyone, then allow staff and service users to discuss their experience of Spice in a ‘safe’ space. I felt that it was really important bridge the gap between the staffs’ perception of Spice and the actual experiences of the clients. The session was a huge success; staff opened up to the service users about their feelings of frustration and annoyance, which I think helped clients to see how their actions may be affecting others. Equally, service users then shared their own stories of their experience of Spice, and this allowed the staff to see the other side of the coin. A client may be behaving erratically or being aggressive, but underneath that there is a person who may be extremely frightened or struggling with addiction.

At the end of my internship, I hope that my work will allow St. Anne’s to more effectively tackle the use of Spice among their clients. It was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of Spice research, but I hope that in the future others will be able to use my study as a basis for more widespread research. To the wonderful team at St. Anne’s, it is definitely not goodbye. The work they do is challenging but invaluable to their service users, and I’ll be joining them again (this time as a volunteer) after my graduation.

 

Weeks two and three at St. Anne’s: gaining trust

It’s nearing the end of my third week at St. Anne’s, so it’s definitely time for another blog post. Before we dive into the details, I thought it might be a good idea to clarify some of the jargon I’ll be using throughout my posts.

A ‘client’ or ‘service user’ is someone who has come to St. Anne’s for any kind of assistance, from help with housing or substance abuse problems, to just wanting a shower and a hot meal. St. Anne’s has many different clients, but my project is focused on those who are ‘vulnerably housed’. This term is a bit foggy; it covers just about everything from street homeless (what we tend to think of when we hear the word homeless) to someone living in a hostel, right the way through to people who actually have their own tenancy. You’ll soon pick it up!

Despite the fact that I’ve worked at St. Anne’s before (see my previous blog post) it still took some time to settle in again. For the first week, I heard a lot of “So what are you doing here, then?” “Do you work for a charity?” “Are you a support worker, or what?”. The team at St. Anne’s doesn’t usually change much, so a new face was something of a novelty for the service users.

After this initial novelty wore off, one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced during these first few weeks of the project is how to engage with the service users, and how to persuade them to chat to me about Spice. As you can imagine, some clients can be difficult at times, and often have a hard time trusting people they deem to be professionals (that includes me, apparently). It was my job to make them see that I wasn’t asking questions to be rude or critical, I was simply trying to find out more about Spice. Over the past three weeks, I’ve learnt (sometimes the hard way) how to put clients at ease, so I thought I’d share my top tips with you.

  1. Talk to services users as you would anyone else. People who are vulnerably housed are often cut off from the rest of society, they are used to being shunned and mistrusted. You need to show them that you respect them and their opinion, just like any other person. Be friendly, and don’t be frightened or too formal.
  2. Try to remember their name. Now, this seems pretty obvious, but I’ve found that it makes a huge difference to the service users at St. Anne’s. As I said before, the vulnerably housed often feel rejected by society and as a result can be quite defensive; making an effort to remember someone’s name lets them know that you’ve not just dismissed them because of their position.
  3. Let them be the expert. Compared to most of the services users I have spoken to, my knowledge of Spice (from its various effects to the price of a bag) is pretty rubbish. They are the experts, and it’s important that you treat them as such. Listen to what they say, it might sound odd or even silly to you but you’re not the one taking this drug, they are. I’ve found that this approach also helps to gain the trust of the service users; they spend a lot of time being on the receiving end of help or guidance (from doctors, social workers, etc.) so I think that they enjoy the chance to actually give their own opinions and advice.

So, using these basic ‘tools’ (if you like) I think I’ve managed to gain the trust of a lot of the clients. Many of them remember my name, and will say hello if they see me. It’s really nice to feel part of the community at St. Anne’s. In terms of my project, it’s helped me to engage with the service users and to get them to open up about their experiences with Spice. It’s a little too early to go into the details of my findings, but one thing in particular that has struck me is the sheer volume of service users that take Spice. I’d been told that it was very popular among the vulnerably housed by both the staff at St. Anne’s and associated health professionals, but I didn’t quite understand the scale of the problem until I witnessed it first-hand. Literally every single person I have asked in the last three weeks has taken Spice at least once.

The poster shown below is displayed in the reception area of St. Anne’s; I walk past it every day. Worryingly, during my time here I have spoken to clients  and staff who have experienced (or witnessed someone else experiencing) all of the listed effects of so-called ‘legal highs’. It’s not pleasant to talk about, but hopefully my project will play a small part in raising the public’s awareness of the dangers of Spice.

 

 

St. Anne’s Community Services – who, what, where and why?

I thought I’d dedicate my first blog post to explaining at little bit about my internship, and the organisation that I’ll be working with over the coming weeks.

St. Anne’s Community Services is a charity based in Leeds that provides a huge variety of services to many groups, from the homeless to those with mental health problems, from asylum seekers to people with substance abuse issues. In 2014 (see my previous Charity Insights blog posts!) I carried out a project at St. Anne’s that was focused on Alcohol Related Brain Damage, or ARBD, in the homeless. I really enjoyed working with the team at St. Anne’s and really admired the (often difficult) work that they do, so it’s no surprise that I’m back again!

This year, my project is focused on Spice, a synthetic cannabinoid that, until May 26th, was classified as a ‘legal high’. Before this date, it was legal to sell Spice in the UK, so it could be purchased on the internet and even in shops. Due to increasing concerns about the effects of Spice on both the physical and mental health of its users, on May 26th this year it became illegal to sell it, or to possess with intent to sell.

Spice comes in hundreds of different varieties, is relatively cheap, and can have a huge range of effects, most of which are not desirable. These range from black-outs, anxiety and a racing heart to seizures, psychosis and even death.

So where does my project come into all this? During my time at St. Anne’s in 2014 I spoke to quite a few service users who had mentioned Spice. I didn’t know what it was, so decided to investigate. After speaking to the staff and doing some research of my own, I realised just how serious this problem was, especially amongst the homeless. Worryingly, because Spice has only begun to be abused relatively recently, there is little or no data available on its use, long-term and short-term effects.

During my internship this year, then, I will be gathering information from service users at St. Anne’s (who are homeless or what we call ‘vulnerably housed’) about their experiences with Spice. In addition, I will also be working closely with the staff to gauge their knowledge and experience of the drug and its effects. The aim is to help St. Anne’s understand how and why the homeless are using Spice, if they contact the emergency services as a result, and how they are obtaining it now that the law has changed. We also want to ensure that the staff have all the knowledge they need to identify someone who has taken Spice, and ensure that they receive the appropriate care. It’s a challenging area, but it’s so important that we learn more about this really worrying trend.

If you want to find out a bit about the effects of taking Spice, watch the episode of ‘999: What’s Your Emergency?’ that was broadcast on 11th July 2016 on Channel 4. It shows how the emergency services are trying to deal with the devastating effects of legal highs, and is a bit of an eye opener. Take a look.