Getting to know...the Sue Lambert Trust Team

Working life

1. What lead you to your role working at Sue Lambert Trust?

I began volunteering at Sue Lambert in around 2013 and have had a paid post with the organisation for about 5-6 years. My background and previous employment has been in mental health and trauma has always been the area that I am most interested in. I have also been keen to work in the voluntary sector for some time.

2.  How would you summarise your role at SLT?

I work as a support worker for the practical groundwork team. My role is to assist clients with any of the practical things that may be making their wait for counselling with us particularly challenging. It might also be that clients are struggling to focus on the therapeutic side of things in their counselling sessions because practical problems are getting in their way.

This is often things like unsuitable housing, debt, problems with benefits, and finances amongst lots of other things. Once a client has reached some resolution to their practical problems, they are often more able to engage with the counselling process and manage their symptoms of trauma more effectively.

3. What do you like most about working for Sue Lambert Trust?

I like working in a smaller team and in the lovely environment that we have at our Norwich office. I am very passionate about and committed to the support I can offer clients who have experienced trauma. The impact of this on peoples lives can be devestating and I hope to be able to help in some small way to make things Having lived experience of this, I know how incredibly tough this can be.

Home life

1. What do you like doing in your spare time, what are your hobbies or interests outside of work?

In my spare time, I like writing. I have been writing prose poetry for a long time now but am only recently taking it a bit more seriously by doing more courses and hopefully looking at competitions and possibly getting some bit published. I draw, people mainly. I love people’s faces! I paint with oils a bit too but don’t take to a brush as well as a pencil. I love my garden and growing Dahlias. I love reading- I’m a massive reader of contemporary, mostly women writers and poets. I love the telly and am an ambulance programme addict! I love cups of tea, seeing my three grown up Sons and family and going book shopping with my Husband.

2. What’s your favourite food or meal?

My favourite food is very tricky. I LOVE food. But my Husband makes me bread and butter pudding every birthday every valentines day and every anniversary cos its my absolute joy! My Nanny used to make me a whole Pyrex dish all to myself on a Sunday and she was my most adored person growing up. And anything cheesey of course.

3. What’s your favourite place to visit in Norfolk?

I love The Book Hive and Waterstones book shops in Norwich and Heffers in Cambridge and Blackwells in Oxford ! I do love Sheringham and Cromer and my own little garden takes some beating in the summer.

4. If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?

If I could go anywhere in the world, I think it would be Japan. My Husband and I have been wanting to go for ages. India too.

Having said that, I love Cornwall with all my heart, as it is a childhood place and I just love the light and the total loveliness of it all. Cambridge is a favourite of ours. We are a couple of ‘locals’, couple of home birds really. Give me my garden and a book and a cup of tea and I’m in love.