A Shiremoor charity is today celebrating its first anniversary of joining the fight against poverty in the North East.
Support and Grow North East was set up by Janine Turnbull and Louise Jones, who bring their own life experiences into the work they do for the charity.
Their experiences are very different with Janine having a stable home life and a supportive family, amassing 22 years of experience in community engagement and policing.
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Janine is passionate about helping others, leading to her becoming a police officer, focusing on community engagement and hate crime, bringing these valuables skills into her work with Support and Grow North East, which is based at Bertram Grange Community Centre.
Louise, however, was born into poverty and has experienced various forms of abuse. This trauma led her down a self-destructive path and it wasn't until she was arrested that something happened which changed her life.
"I was arrested for fighting and a police officer showed compassion and encouraged me to think about how I could change things for me and my newborn son," she said.
"Traumatised people don't tend to think about the future, but he encouraged me to make goals and plan. He changed my whole mindset.
"I ended a toxic relationship and went back to education, earned a degree, and eventually became a director of a multi-million-pound company, but I never forgot where I came from and want to help others that are in a similar situation."
Support and Grow North East are working to address the underlying issues that contribute to poverty and this kind of trauma. They have a self-developed growth model which helps people to grow in confidence and self-esteem.
They have made 5,500 crisis care interactions in the last year, while providing another 3,000 with clothing support. Over 1,500 people also attended their activities.
Janine said: "Our growth model is centred on three elements, engage, enable, and empower. We engage at the initial point of contact which is usually at a crisis care stage and then enable them by giving confidence and helping them to better themselves. Finally, we empower them to move forward in their own lives.
“We cover the whole of North Tyneside Newcastle and Northumberland and we're joining up resources so that we don’t work in isolation. It’s a similar approach to my policing days where I discovered that you need to work with multiple agencies with different skill sets work together to tackle societal issues.
"The model has definitely worked well with Louise and I with our vastly different backgrounds and that can only be good for our community and clients."
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