Youth Homelessness Prevention Coordinator Sarah Collier wins big at awards ceremony

8 February 2022

To mark the end of National Safeguarding Week, the Cardiff and Vale Regional Safeguarding Board held its annual Safeguarding Recognition Awards ceremony where the Council scooped a few awards.

Youth Homelessness Prevention Coordinator Sarah Collier of the Youth Service triumphed in the Significant Wider Community Safeguarding section.

Sarah leads a team that helps families access food, free school meals and other essential items.

She and colleagues also offer advice and support with managing budgets, ensuring food can stretch to feed the whole family.

“The current role is fairly new across the country. During Covid both the role and the team’s position became vital to some of the families across the Vale of Glamorgan in respect to vulnerabilities and coping throughout the pandemic,” she said.

“Some young people we worked with didn’t have bedding, towels or toiletries so we created packs that were delivered directly to each person in the home. We wanted to ensure young people felt safe, secure and had some comforts that we consider everyday items.”

Sarah and her team also wanted to help promote positive mental health and wellbeing among the families they worked with. The team set about creating accessible games, promoting positive family time with activities such as cooking, sports and board games, the aim of this was to improve the time spent at home with the family.

“One family have been known to me through my work in the Vale for the last 10 years,” added Sarah. “The mother sadly passed away in May 2021, leaving four children aged between three and 17 and one young grandchild.

“I supported the children individually to ensure their needs were considered throughout the following months. This wasn’t something that any of the children had been prepared for. I was able to help the family due to the relationship I had with their mum and each of the children. Having their trust enabled me to give advice and guidance, speaking to the older children every day.

“The past year for the older three has been particularly tough. They have experienced many issues between them and have struggled emotionally to overcome a lot of incidents. This has meant more intense work such as emotional understanding and mental health, education around exploitation both sexual and criminal and respect and boundaries.

“Throughout this time I have tried to be an advocate for the children, make sure mum’s wishes are considered and always being there for the children to talk about mum as and when they want to, as an organic process rather than with an unknown professional.”

The Cardiff and Vale Safeguarding Recognition Awards recognise groups and individuals that have made a significant impact in the field.

Sarah’s award is testament to the hard work and effort she and her team have put into helping these families throughout the last year.