September 8, 2015

Values Awards: We will earn people’s trust

This winning nomination was submitted by someone who came across this story at one of our recent roadshows storytelling sessions.

Winner: Katie Owens

This winning nomination was submitted by someone who came across this story at one of our recent roadshows storytelling sessions.

Katie Owens is a Specialist Practitioner with our Family Impact service. Katie has worked for PSS for nearly five years. A few years ago two children were referred to our Family Impact service. Their mother was a drug and alcohol user and there was concern for their well-being. When first referred the family gave the impression of coping well. It was only when the team dug deeper – calling the school and finding out that the children had not attended in months – that they realised all was not well.

The mother worked in the sex industry and would often disappear for days at a time, leaving the children at home alone and sending money back to them (they were aged 11 and 13) via a taxi so they could sort food and electricity. At one point the 11 year old boy asked Katie if “she went out and got pissed with her son”; he knew Katie had a son the same age as him. Katie realised this child had a very warped view of a parent/child relationship and that she had some re-education to do. Katie built a supportive relationship with this young man over the following years and supported him as he put himself into the care system and subsequently through a couple of difficult foster placements.

Eventually he was placed in a great foster placement and he has subsequently flourished. He is now in college and is applying to join the Fire Brigade. Over the past few years, Katie has continued to support this young man in her own time and now supports him as an advocate.

Due to his upbringing this young man would have been naturally suspicious of many adults, but because of the way she has worked with him Katie has built a trusting that has benefited the young man, but one that Katie says she too has benefited from. She says her own life has been enriched and that she has learnt as much from him as she has given to him. To go to these lengths to support someone no longer directly connected to work and to do so out of work time deserves recognition.

As one of our panel members said, Katie went above and beyond in her role to give a young person a better start in life, which is why this nomination was chosen as a moving example of being able to earn people’s trust.