Christians invited to Complex Support Needs Summit

A number of Christian cross-church organisations involved in caring work have been invited to a “summit” organised by the Ipswich Local Strategic Partnership, which aims to ensure better co-ordination between agencies helping people with complex support needs.

Revd Paul Daltry, Minister for Church and Community Engagement in Ipswich, writes

“Christians have for many years been involved in helping those who are facing deprivation in this town through organisations such as FIND, the Soup Kitchen, the Salvation Army Hostel, Town Pastors and other projects. It is part of Christ’s witness to care for the poor, the broken and the oppressed. The recently announced Summit for all those working in this field is to be warmly supported.”

Recently there has been a growing awareness that, despite many resources being made available for this work, often the people are not actually being helped.

The Local Strategic Partnership in Ipswich (a body that brings together local government, businesses, health, police, voluntary and faith sector) has set a priority to improve ways out of deprivation through better co-ordinated work that focuses on the person - rather than on the targets of the service providers.

The Ipswich Umbrella Trust is planning to open a ‘One Stop Shop’ for people with chaotic lifestyles and complex needs, and the Summit is intended to help develop ways for all the dozens of agencies to work more effectively together through common ways of working – a form of agreed ‘Care Plan’.

Paul again - “Could you please pray:

for the Summit to be successful in developing a shared vision and a common methodology,
for all those who currently work in this field, and
whether you can help any of the organisations already operating as listed above, or whether you can help some of the new schemes coming together now such as Talitha Koum, or Emmaus.

Prayer can move mountains.”

Revd Paul Daltry can be contacted at paul@daltry.co.uk