Turning Point Scotland WAYfinder

Turning Point Scotland has a vision that ‘Everyone we support has a safe place to call home, positive relationships, a sense of belonging to their community and the opportunity to have valued roles.’ In order to achieve this vision; we believe that the people we support should have access to a menu of options to support their needs, skills and future aspirations focussing on our Citizenship approach.

In our WAYfinder North West service in Glasgow, we are using volunteer Community Connectors to help people to connect or reconnect to their communities using a trauma informed mentoring approach. The Community Connector approach aims to promote the importance and benefits of service user involvement and sharing of lived experience of homelessness and other challenges (mental health, problematic use of alcohol and other drugs etc) that have had a negative impact on people’s lives. We believe that the unique insight into social and personal issues that our connectors have experienced will be invaluable to the individuals that they will mentor.

Community Connectors will work one on one, using a mentoring approach with people who are currently receiving support from WAYfinder. The Community Connectors will find out what individuals would like to get out of community connecting and support them to achieve these goals, whether that is connecting to a group in their new area or to a community of interest, a new hobby, or the start of gaining employment skills. Support might just be for a few weeks or could be a more long term (a few months) mentoring relationship depending on the individual’s needs and preferences.

Support will be delivered through a person-centred mentoring approach, depending on individual goals. This may involve –

• Researching and educating people on local resources

• Developing relationships with other organisations or groups working in the community

• Supporting people to develop relationships based on shared interests

• Providing and/or attending initial introductions to groups, courses or activities

• Identifying community supports which may help avoid future re-entry to services