In 2024, you helped bring families together
On Christmas Day last year a grandfather arrived early at his daughter’s home with presents for the grandchildren.
Then he did something very unusual. He stayed all day. This was the first time he had ever been able to do this – and his life felt transformed with happiness.
Every other Christmas he had arrived about 8am, left at 9am, and gone back to the old caravan where he lived and drank the rest of the day – as he did every day.
Let’s call him John. He was one of our clients who had spent time with our detox service and time in our transitional housing with its supportive wrap-around City Mission services. Somewhere along the way he found the strength to want to quit alcohol and with our support to become “a different man” as one of our staff described it.
Although our impact on the community is rightly measured by achievement statistics, some of the impact we have on the lives of people we care for lies beyond what numbers can tell. This especially includes our positive impact on families and family relationships.
In many ways across many services our work helps bring families together.
Ultimately, having enough to eat and somewhere safe to sleep means little when you are alone and disconnected from family and friends. Happiness lies in being with others and being with people and family who unconditionally support you.
Family support builds strength and resilience and helps people be able to manage better for themselves. We see families rebuild their bonds once we have cared for the member they lost.
Late last year a young mum who was staying in our women’s emergency shelter was devastated because her children had been taken away from her.
But we helped her change her life around to the point where she was given supervised access to her children and this year is applying for equal custody. The positive impact for her and her children has been enormous. At Christmas we gave her donated presents to give to her children which she would not have afforded otherwise, and she said over and over she was so grateful for what the City Mission had done for her and her family.
Another client’s wider family had split in two groups – one, which he belonged to, drank all the time, and another which was sober. Last year, after being with us, he swapped groups and he’s so much happier. Your impact in helping bring families back together again is making a wonderful difference to many lives in our community.