Life Change Changes Lives Affected By Flood

One week after completion they were hit by the extensive and unprecedented flooding in Downpatrick which resulted in their entire premises being under water to up to 3 feet in places. Their counsellor Manus Teague said, “We teach resilience to our participants who are affected by mental ill health and/or addiction and we just had to practice what we teach”. Our efforts to return to work and service provision were successful only due to the huge support we had from our volunteers, staff, participants, directors, and families of those who had benefited from our service provision in the past. Participants ran fundraisers, crocheted, and knitted to restock our shop, and families and friends donated funds to help us resume service provision as soon as we could. Even so, the loss of our support services saw two participants slip on their road to recovery but thankfully are now back addressing their addictions with the help and peer support of others in LCCL. We are back open now in our second week and the contractors are finally leaving having returned to repair and replace items damaged in the floods. We are turning our attention now to helping participants affected by the cost of living crisis and food poverty, those who are homeless and those who need help to sustain their tenancies. Christmas is a very difficult time for most of our participants and we encourage them to try and match expectations with reality at this time as few really get to enjoy the commercialised portrayal of a happy family Christmas.

You can find out more about LCCL by visiting their website. You can get in contact with LCCL by e-mailing them at lifechangechangeslives@gmail.com or by calling them on 02844 616166.