In 2015 I decided to leave my home town Barnsley and moved to Castleford to make a new start. I had made many bad choices throughout my adult life and after many failed attempts to get my life back on track, this seemed the only way forward. I had never been to the area before and didn’t know anyone and soon started using the food bank at Trinity Mission. I hadn’t been going there for very long when I was asked if I wanted to join their work group. I accepted and started to help within the local community group’s bee hives as well as working within the Trinity Mission premises painting and decorating.

After a year and a half I moved on another step and became a volunteer with the mission and time spent doing this has increased over time. I have now been a volunteer for Trinity Mission for over five years.

In 2021 I became a member of the missions management team and a trustee of the charity. Trinity Mission saved my life in so many ways and I will always be eternally grateful to the mission for giving me a second chance.

When Chris first came in to Trinity Mission he was homeless, living in a van and didn’t want any help aside from his food parcel and somewhere to sleep when the mission was open overnight. One evening session Chris was found banging his head on the wall outside with blood running down his face, he just couldn’t cope with how the day had gone. The support co-ordinator cleaned up the blood and took him to A&E, sitting with him for over 4 hours and was a calming influence. Chris opened up to the support coordinator and told him how he’d been under a mental health team from the age of 11. Chris told him that he worked for Leeds city council in the parks department many years ago but now couldn’t hold down a job or stick to anything for long without feeling like he needed to get away.

Chris was signposted to a housing association who placed him in temporary accommodation. This wasn’t easy because he had trust issues and didn’t want to go but with help, encouragement, support and time building trust with the support coordinator at the mission, Chris accepted the house. The support coordinator then signposted him to a local community group, friends of Fryston woods. Chris along with the support coordinator and some other volunteers would walk in the woods help out with community events carry out litter picks and helped with general tidying of the woods and other outdoor jobs. Chris built up trust and confidence helping with the group’s weekly tasks.

The group paid for him and another guest from the mission to do a training course in Bee keeping and along with the support co-ordinator looked after the groups two bee hives checking on the bee’s regularly, ensuring they had everything they needed to remain healthy and extracting the honey. The group were very impressed with Chris’ outdoors knowledge and found the funding to train him as a NVQ level two forestry school teacher to work alongside their existing level three teacher leading forestry classes. Chris, now with full DBS paper work, also started to help with a local youth group teaching them wood work.

Chris then became a volunteer at the mission and along with the support coordinator started up work groups made up of guests from Trinity Mission to carry out jobs in the community and for some local churches including the premises of Trinity Mission. These sessions were designed to help ease depression amongst its members by giving them a feeling of self-worth and showing them that they had something that they could offer. Some jobs carried out by the group include litter picks, gardening, painting and decorating even building a wall around the dustbins.

Chris had found the confidence that he had lost many years before and felt secure in his own home, rented from the local council. Chris went on to start his own landscape gardening company allowing him to work when he felt able but be able to take a break if things got too much for him. Chris would always tell people that his life had changed so much for the better and that this was down to the help and support that he received from Trinity Mission.