By Sharon Sharman, Learning and Evaluation Manager, VOICES

It was a cold Wednesday afternoon back in February this year– a usual day in the office. Fact finding and phone calls, report writing, gathering information and statistics, co-designing workshops with Expert Citizens and battling our way through complex systems.

Our Service Coordinators advocate assertively on behalf of people who, on a daily basis, have difficulty accessing the services they need to overcome multiple traumas and complex situations. It’s a mix of wondering where one person might sleep that night blended with a celebration that another had been safely homed in an appropriate environment with the right support. All this activity helps to form the ‘busy buzz’ in the office atmosphere. Just another day at work until at around 3.30pm, “You’ve got to be kidding!” An involuntary phrase escaped in the moment. The words broke through the busy office buzz for a moment. It was a short, brisk walk along the corridor, time being the factor, to discuss the situation with our service manager. She held in her hand a prison release plan that had just been emailed to us. “You need to see this”, she said. The plan related to a man who was leaving prison the very next morning. What followed was an improbable journey. While this is a particularly egregious example, it is not atypical. To learn more about what happens next read our case study here