Kate works for Leicestershire County Council and her official title is Community Recovery Worker – a job description not many people will have heard about as it’s quite new. The first were established in 2020 to help individuals and communities recover from Covid but the brief has widened as needs have changed.
Community recovery workers now respond to people who want to access benefit advice; are facing social isolation; are suffering from poor mental health; need adult social care; are in food poverty; have housing problems or energy difficulties; or have never learnt how to use a computer so can’t cope with the online world. Kate loves her job because it is so varied. She feels she can make a difference to people’s lives by pointing them to agencies such as those within the local authority itself, Work and Pensions or Citizens Advice – or by solving the problem herself. Whatever age you are, single, married, divorced or part of a family she’s willing to fight your corner!
But how did Kate become Charnwood’s Community Recovery Worker?
Well, to begin with, Kate was born in Leicester and has lived in Leicestershire all her life. For over twenty years she was employed in the charity sector working in social care and housing. Her degree, from Derby University, was in psychology but over the years she has gained further diplomas in criminology and domestic violence and other specialist in-house qualifications in mental health and safeguarding. After a three-year break to have a daughter, Kate wanted to return to work but not to her old job, which involved emergency telephone calls at weekends and at all times of the day and night, so she was delighted to become a community recovery worker. This service is not involved in the chaos of crisis intervention as it concentrates on low level, practical social care.
The service is meant to be short-term, offering help from between one-to-five weeks. Sometimes, however, if this isn’t long enough, then a person can be re-referred. There’s an emphasis on enriching people’s lives and supporting them to remain independent. Kate says in doing this she helps people fill in a lot of forms! For example, perhaps someone has become arthritic and would like to apply for a Blue Badge for their car, but doesn’t know how to go about it; or a person is very worried about a medical condition yet has to wait a long time to see a doctor. Kate can support people like this by getting hold of the Blue Badge forms and helping to fill them in, or in the case of seeing a doctor, go to the surgery and nag and nag and nag until something is done!
Kate knows the problems faced by people in villages very well as she covers all the villages in Charnwood. She has to sort out her days efficiently so she doesn’t waste time driving up and down the A6. I asked her which was her favourite village but she fudged the answer saying that you wouldn’t ask a mother which was her favourite child! But she did say that Barrow was a great community with so many different groups offering support and activities. Kate herself learnt about Barrow Voice from a visit to the Bishop Beveridge Club. Interestingly, the people she visits are not referred to as ‘clients’ or ‘customers’ but as ’introductions’ as someone, or some agency, has introduced them to her. Kate made sixty new ‘introductions’ in January alone.
Gaynor Barton
Kate is part of a team and each team member wants to be recognised by members of their own village communities. Kate says that they can help so much more if they are a familiar face and known as a helpful person to contact for advice and support. If after reading this article you would like to contact Kate then email Kate.Crowfoot@leics.gov.uk or ring 07514 719331. She’d be delighted to hear from you.
