Resident Support and Advocacy Services

The Creation Southwark Team offers one to one advice, support and advocacy services around housing and benefits to Aylesbury residents. Our bespoke services are tailored to individuals using a person-centred approach to maximise the effect of the support on your well-being.

What We Do

At any one time, we are working with around 80 residents on the Aylesbury estate. This includes secure tenants, people living in temporary accommodation and private tenants. We offer advice, information, practical support and advocacy.

Our casework service is provided on a one-to-one basis, which means we are free to tailor the service to the individual needs of the person or people we are working with. The service is free and confidential and open to anyone living on the Aylesbury estate.

The Practical Support We Offer

We help residents fill in forms and make phone calls on their behalf, often mediating with organisations such as benefits agencies, energy companies and landlords. We have also helped with family mediation and intervention, where it helps to involve someone impartially.

How we work

For us building relationships and trust is the most important part of the Resident Support Team work. We work in a positive, non-judgemental and supportive way to get the best result for the individual.

Our Ingredients

We are fierce, passionate and persistent

Our Success rate of resolving our client's issues is 100%, no matter how long it takes. Some of our clients have been with us for years, which is a testimony to the complexities around resolving certain issues. While being respectful to all in our work.

We have the Heart of a Lion

Being a small team and having clients with multiple needs, the success of our work relies on working with many varying professionals in statutory and non-statutory organisations. As non-statutory, we do not yield the power or authority that statutory organisations have. To balance that we have developed strong working partnerships across the board and have gained huge resect, acknowledgement and support for our work. Our team may be as small as a jack russell, but we have the Heart of a Lion.

As a CIC, we will expand

The word of mouth is powerful - our service is approached by many others that are outside of our footprint who we are not able to support other than to sign-post, which shows the need and want for our type of service.

We make time and space to look after each other's wellbeing

We have developed a service built on a way of working that is equally caring for each other as it is for our clients. Working up close and personal with clients, who while with us share their lives with us, can be extremely stressful and impact personal wellbeing. Through caring and sharing we have an extremely low incidence of sickness, absence or job turn-around.

We are here for everyone

We constantly strive on providing a quality service  to all of our users. We are anti-racist, inclusive, flexible, approachable and accessible.

We Support, We Advocate, We Educate

In the main, we are a one stop, hand holding service. We work very closely for and with our clients, we manage their expectations through being transparent, create a support plan together that identifies actions that we will each take, so giving some responsibility to them for their own outcomes, continually keep them updated, explaining what we are doing and why. We strive to make our service enabling so that our clients can develop enough skills, knowledge and confidence to be better equipped to deal with issues that occur in the future.

Access to our Services

There is no age limit to the people we work with, it is open to anyone on the Aylesbury estate, who feel that they need some additional support. We receive referrals from other organisations including social services, housing officers and day care centres. But people can also refer themselves.

Sometimes we may have to refer a resident to a more specialist organisation, but we will always make sure that you are provided with the right information and that you get the assistance you need.

Our History

NEW DEAL for COMMUNITIES (NDC)

The Aylesbury estate in South London was one of the 39 areas in the UK chosen by the government in 1999 to receive New Deal for Communities (NDC) funding. The 10-year NDC programme was designed to bridge the gap between some of the most deprived neighbourhoods and the rest of the country

CREATION TRUST

Creation was set up in 2007, as a resident led organisation, supporting people through large scale regeneration and is the successor organisation to the Aylesbury NDC. We have been independent of the NDC since 2010, but we continue to work on the same principles, outlined in the Area Action Plan, honouring the commitment to the neighbourhood that the council will oversee through the development process. Helping people reach their full potential and building a neighbourhood that they want to live in. One of the many projects created by Creation Trust was the Resident Support Team, a team of Caseworkers supporting people through the regeneration who have ongoing issues in one or more areas of their life. This Team has now gone forward to become Creation Southwark CIC the successor of Creation Trust.

CREATION SOUTHWARK CIC

Creation Southwark CIC is a Resident Support Programme that offers in-depth, one to one support to any resident on the estate, including those residents living in temporary accommodation. We offer support to older people, residents with long term health conditions, those experiencing mental health issues or those with complex family arrangements. We can also support people through the regeneration process to find housing that suits their needs.

Meet the team

Carmen Cassar

Older person support worker

Carmen Cassar

Older Person Support Worker My work with the Poppy Project so far has been very rewarding I am happy to be a part of a project that supports the older residents living in the area in a bespoke way that meets their individual needs while building lasting relationships.
read more

Jo Marr

Director, Creation Southwark CIC

I have considerable experience in housing and regeneration. As a former Housing Officer, I have supported hundreds of residents through the regeneration process. In addition, I am a qualified counsellor and community mediator. “I am passionate about communities both old and new and embrace all the diversities and challenges communities can bring. I enjoy using my experience to help others and am a firm believer in treating people the way I want to be treated, which is my philosophy in life. Life can be difficult for anyone at any time so to be in a position to make it a little bit easier has made my role as Resident/Senior Caseworker a pleasure”, Going forward I will continue to support and advocate for the community in my new role as Director of Creation Southwark CIC.

Natasha Beattie

Director, Creation Southwark CIC

I have a wealth of experience working with different groups within the community, most of my career has been spent in Care Management advocating for older people. I started working for Creation Trust in 2013 as a Resident Caseworker and quickly moved into a more senior Casework role, before becoming a Director of Creation Southwark CiC in 2020, heading up The Resident Support Programme. I am passionate about my role and enjoy working with people to make a difference in their lives delivering support and advocacy to those who need it most.  

Edward Freeman

Benefits Advisor/Caseworker

I currently work as a benefits adviser for both Creation and an advice centre in Lambeth. This involves providing both general welfare benefits advice as well as advocacy on a wide range of issues. Prior to this, I worked in several prisons across London for St Mungo’s as a housing adviser. I worked on tenancy sustainment, assisting prisoners to avoid eviction so they were not homeless on release. I have also worked in Lambeth’s supported housing service for vulnerable adults.

Skip to content