Member News: Break are celebrating Hidden Heroes Day!

Today everyone at Break is celebrating our Hidden Heroes. The people who go that extra mile and make a huge difference in the work we do. There were so many to choose from so here are the two we'd love to share with you...

Mark Edwards
Mark Edwards began his career at Break eight and a half years ago. He is our Maintenance Coordinator but so much more…

Mark has always worked hard to be approachable and friendly towards all the young people in our care. He has such a gentle, kind manner that young people are often to be found working alongside him, sometimes fixing the hole in the wall that they created, and at other times, just chatting about life.

Mark has built a relationship with a young person in one of our children’s homes – they have a shared interest in mountain biking, in fast cars and more recently, geo-caching. Mark went on holiday with the children’s home recently (in his weekend off) and he made sure that when a young person was looking bored, he found an opportunity for an adventure.

Mark feels like one of the Break family and believes his role (over and above his job) is to befriend, support and help point young people in the right direction.

He said “it’s the most fulfilling thing I have ever done. I worked for 25 years on building sites and I now work at Break where it is so much more than a job. I see the other side now, the side I did not know existed. This job has changed my life”.

Mark is one of Break’s #hiddenheroes because he has changed the lives of so many young people by going the extra mile.

Shannon Evans
Shannon Evans works as a Senior Support Worker at Morley House, our bespoke children’s home for children with disabilities. Shannon was amazing throughout lockdown and emanated Break’s ‘can do’ values by creating education plans for all four young people at Morley.

It was difficult to help the young people to understand the concept of Covid and lockdown and Shannon worked hard to ensure that they could understand by creating “social stories” and sensory experiences to help them come to terms with the disruption to their normal routines.

Shannon made sure that each young person during lockdown had lots of exciting things to do each day. Each week there was a theme. One week it was “We’re going on a bear hunt” and Shannon planned activities that fitted the theme – a scavenger hunt in the woods, a session making edible mud and making magic mud recipes. The young people all engaged and all loved it.

Lockdown was tough, but the young people at Morley House learnt so much – from making lava lamps to rockets, from shaving foam activities to just having fun – thanks to Shannon (and the whole team) they got through it as a family.

Shannon is one of Break’s #hiddenheroes because she has changed the lives of so many young people by going the extra mile.​

Source:
https://break-charity.org

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