Anna Price, the community lead at St Mary Magdalene, says its work to build community resilience and break down isolation is hugely important.
“Many people get into a crisis partly because they’re on their own and they’ve got no-one around them to help them make sense of things and help them move forward in life,” she says.
“The cycles that I see of families, the kind of generational dependence on benefits, has meant that for some, they no longer have the skills or the upbringing to know how to hold down a job.”
St Mary Magdalene sits within an estate with high levels of unemployment and “economically inactive” people who are neither in work nor looking for it.
Mental health issues, neurodivergent conditions, physical ill health and…