Oral history with Christine Hawkins, 19 November 2016, Cardiff

Description

Interview with Christine Hawkins, regarding her volunteer work at InRoads, guerilla yarn-bombing, and more, 19 November 2016, recorded at Cardiff University.

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The Chronicle Project is a community heritage project supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund and run by VCS Cymru with the aims to document the history of volunteering in Cardiff, from 1914 to 2014.

Visit our website at: http://chronicle.vcscymru.org.uk

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CH = Christine Hawkins, LW = Liz Williams

LW: We will now begin recording the interview with Christine Hawkins. The recording takes place on the nineteenth of November at Cardiff University, in the John Percival building. The volunteers present are Liz and Kayleigh. The recording is being collected as an oral history, and will be part of the Chronicle Project, a project run by VCS Cymru and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
[Background - 0:25 to 0:35]
CH: Okay, my name is Christine Hawkins, I’m a volunteer supervisor at councillors and a previous volunteer councillor, and sometime guerilla yarn bomber.

LW: Brilliant. So what forms of volunteering activities have you done in the past and the present?
[Past volunteering experiences - 0:41 to 1:14]
CH: In the past? so in the past I have been a treasurer for an Oxfam shop. I’ve, as a child I used to do things like um sell pictures for the NSPCC, um, which you couldn’t do these days, obviously, because no one would want to take round pictures of children, and um, I’ve done things through the church, but I think most of my volunteering has been more recently in order to get my counselling certificate.

LW: Brilliant. So what organisations specifically have you volunteered with?
[Associated volunteer organisations - 1:19 to 1:29]
CH: So in the Cardiff area, I have volunteered with inroads street drug projects. I worked with them for three years as a volunteer cognitive behavioural therapist.

LW: Can you tell us a little bit more about your role in these certain organisations?
[Roles and responsibilities - 1:34 to 3:13]
CH: Yup, so InRoads is an organisation that helps people to, um, who are, um, have drug or alcohol misuse, and helps them to stay healthy and then when they’re ready, um, they help them to come off their substance of choice, and um, those are off their medications, sorry, off their drugs or alcohol, can be referred for counselling services, and as a crocerty behavioural therapist that’s where I used to come in, so um, clients would be referred to me, and um, we would go through um a programme of counselling, it was not time limited, so um they had what they needed, so, for some clients, it might have been for a few weeks, some for few months and one I worked with for over a year, so clients had a number of issues that they were working with, so although they might have issues with alcohol or drugs, that wasn’t always the first issue, it might be that they had, um, PTSD or it might be that there was abuse back in their childhood, so we would be working with some quite serious stuff, and the nature of the clients are is that they live quite a chaotic lifestyle so getting clients to turn up would be quite difficult and that would be problematic.

But I used to spend a lot of time with InRoads waiting for a client or hanging round because clients hadn’t turned up, so I got to see what the organisation did, and it’s a really nice place to work, I really enjoyed it and I quite miss it when I’ve not been there.

LW: Brilliant. So what motivated you to start volunteering in the first place?

[Motivations for volunteering - 3:17 to 4:10]
Christine: Well I didn’t have a choice really, because I wanted to be, I wanted to get my qualification in CBT, and in order to do the postgraduate diploma, you have to get 100 hours of counselling in, individual counselling, and the only way you can do that is to get a placement, which is a placement with a volunteer organisation, and I tried loads of different organisations, and nobody was interested in me, and I had to get experience first and my experience was working, paid, as a weight management counsellor, so working with groups of twelve people who were obese, and morbidly obese, so inroads was the only place who would take me based on the experience that I had, to work with them, I had to do that and I got about 100 hours in then, I also did some volunteering in Newport and also with Mind on Newport road.

LW: Oh brilliant, so what did you do with Mind on Newport road?
[Volunteering with Mind - 4:14 to 5:02]
CH: So, with Mind, I worked with them for about, uh, 9 months, it must have been, so again it was about getting the hours up, so I didn’t complete module three, I failed module three, so I had, so that’s why I went to join Mind so I got some different experience. And I worked with clients who were depressed.

So Mind take a lot of volunteer councillors there, I think they have up to eight volunteer counsellors, that they supervise there, and um counsellors would be working, um volunteer counsellors would be working in the daytime or evening, and um, and I worked one afternoon a week with them, I just had two clients to work with, and I arranged my own supervision, uh because they were full, so I had to do that and pay for that.

LW: Oh brilliant, so even if people aren’t striving towards gaining a qualification, would you recommend that more people volunteer within the community?
CH: Well certainly you get a lot out of it, I mean I felt I made a difference, um certainly with the council I made a difference, so people were able to, to live better lives, um, think and behave differently, which is how we work with cognitive behavioural therapy, and I think with people who, who were depressed at Mind, I think, um, that I was able to make some shifts in their thinking, and um thinking about one particular person, was suicidal so we had to work round that, so I’d like to think I’m involved in keeping her alive.

LW: So do you think that volunteering benefits the people who are volunteering, as well as the people you are helping as well?
[Benefits from volunteering - 5:52 to 6:07]
CH: Um well for me, it helped me because it enabled me to get my diploma, um for other people they get a lot out of it because um, you are making a difference to people, a difference to the world that we live in.

LW: Um, so what does volunteering mean to you?
[Meaning of volunteering - 6:11 to 6:38]
CH: Um, well it means a lot of hard work for nothing. Um it means giving up your time, but ultimately I get something out of it. So like with my supervisor course now, I will be a qualified supervisor at the end of it, and I got my Masters in counselling as a result of it, so it means that, it meant I got qualifications, but it meant I got a sense of wellbeing too.

LW: Have you lived in Cardiff all your life?
[More background information - 6:41 to 6:43]
CH: No, I moved to Cardiff in 2008.

LW: So is it mainly Cardiff that you have done your volunteer work in?
CH: Yes, but I did volunteering when I loved in Keythorps, which is the North East of England, Middle-east of England, um uh that’s where I worked with Oxfam shops and I did that for four years.

LW: Do you think you’ll be taking part in any other projects in the future?
[Future propects of volunteering - 7:07 to 7:54]
CH: Um, I expect when I retire I will do. So at the moment I’m working with five voluntary, four voluntary organisations, to get my supervisors qualification, one, I’m working for the NHS as well, for free, so I’m doing all that and when I’ve done that I want a little break from doing voluntary work, but when I’m retired I certainly will do that because I think it’s really important as part of your positive mental health, to keep doing something all the time to keep uh, to have something you do every week, that’s really important, to mix with other people, that’s really important because it’s so easy to get, um, involved in yourself and not involved with the outside world, and I think that keeps things realistic.

LW: Absolutely. Do you think volunteering brings the community, the wider community closer in general, and makes people understand each other better?
[Volunteering and the community - 8:02 to 8:11]
CH: [pause] No I don’t, I think volunteering tends to be done in pockets, all sort of disparate from each other, yeah.

LW: Is there anything else you’d like to say.
CH: Well another thing I did was I volunteered with a group of my friends, we call ourselves Welsh Willy Women, and we did a yarn bombing exercise, so we, the first time, we um, uh, bombed a tree in Pontcanna, and we hung daffodils from it for St David’s day, and the second time we worked with the bay, and we dressed three of their statues there.

So we dressed them in summer gear for the summer, and um, there’s a statue there with, there’s a woman sort of sitting on a fence pointing out towards the sea, and a guy with his hands in his pockets and a dog, and we dressed all of them, and um, my involvement was to be in charge of the shorts project, so me and two or three other women got some shorts, we had to keep going down now and again measuring to make sure we got everything right, and then one morning, with this um, with the um, organisation’s agreement we dressed it all, about six o clock in the morning and then left it.

LW: So what is that organisation in name of?
[Voluntary social groups - 9:18 to 9:27]
CH: We’re called Welsh Woolly Women, so it’s quite, it’s not sort of an organised group of women, but we all get together and we knit and crochet together.
[Break in recording]
LW: So you’ve mentioned that you’ve done lots of different types of volunteering, how would you compare the different types of volunteering that you’ve done?
[Comparisons of volunteering roles - 9:42 to 11:10]
CH: So different counselling organisations were very different, you had to get to learn the way they did things, so um, it usually involved going to um, a, um, a induction, for the organisation, and also having to learn you know, what were their proceedures if we had somebody who was suicidal for example, or somebody who was showing that their children were at risk, so that was a big learning curve for me because everyone was different, and then um, uh, comparing the arts work with volunteering as a counsellor was very different.

So, when we did the tree we had to ask for permission, but had to, we sort of bumped against the uh, legislation and organisations, we wanted to do something, we wanted to dress the big statue of Dave Davis down in Barry, but the council wouldn’t let us do that, because it was a health and safety risk, so um, we then had to get permission from the centre, um, down in the bay, we dressed the statues there, but really yarn bombers, what they do is just go and do it, but amongst our group there are lots of people who don’t want to break rules you see but I think we should break rules. So both sorts have rules that you have to follow, and sometimes pushing against them is a bit tricky.

LW: So, do you feel that because you’ve done so many different types of volunteering that you have great experience of volunteering as a whole?
CH: I think is what I’ve learnt is that there are many many different types of volunteers and mine is quite a narrow sphere, so working with church type stuff, and say Oxfam, is quite narrow, and counselling is quite a narrow field. And there is so much out there that people can do, it’s very different, so no I don’t have a wide experience.

LW: What are your favourite memories from your volunteering?
[Favorite memories of volunteering - 11:49 to 13:04]
CH: From the yarn bombing, actually dressing the tree was really funny cause we took our photos but held our backs to the cameras, so we wouldn’t be seen cause we were supposed to be doing it as gorillas, and the same thing dressing the statues down the bay, we allowed our photos to be taken from behind but not as we were dressing it, so people wouldn’t know who we were, although obviously I’ve let the cat out the back as to who was one of them.

So that was really funny, and then, other memories working with clients, I think making big differences helped, so some of the ones I’ve mentioned are like helping a client who was suicidal, or working long term with a client, um, for me I don’t like to, because I work privately now, I don’t enjoy working long term, or I say I don’t like working long term with people, but actually I do, because you build up a great relationship a person, and you can see them changing from being something who’s really not coping with the world or with whatever their issue is, to being a fully formed person again, and being able to tackle all sorts of things, so thinking about those people, making a difference are the things that are my favourite memories.

LW: So as well as with clients, have you built strong relationship with your colleagues and other volunteers as well?
[Friends made from volunteering - 13:13 to 14:01]
CH: I think I had a good relationship at InRoads, and I certainly have a relationship with the two people who run it, so I’ve done, I’ve actually done something else for them thinking about it, when, after I finished working with them I made a blanket for them, for them to use however they wanted, and I know it’s on their therapy bed, so I do pop in now and again so I have a good relationship with them.

Mind, less so, I think because the person that was in charge there broke an arm and I wasn’t kept up to date with what was going on so there was poor communication there. And I’ve got a great bond with Welsh Woolly women because, you know, we have great fun together, and we do stuff together, you know, craft together.

LW: So, have you seen other people like yourself progress from one type of volunteering to another, and impacted the community?
CH: ummm [pause] I can't say that I have no, sorry.

LW: So you’ve obviously mentioned that you can come across difficulties in volunteering, so what has made you most frustrated in your past and present experience with volunteering?

[Frustrations with volunteering - 14:29 to 15:29]
CH: Um, with counselling, I think the, um, the biggest frustration was clients not turning up for sessions, because um, I get a little bit precious about my time, so, you know I was giving my time freely, and yet people wouldn’t turn up for sessions, and, so I had to have a word with myself really because the type of clients that I was working with live very chaotic lives, and often don’t even know the time, so for me to expect them to know when they had their appointment was a bit unrealistic, um, so that was a bit frustrating, and so what that did, was that impacted on how quickly I could get my hours in to complete my course.

Fortunately I did get enough hours in the end because I went to volunteer with the NHS in Newport, so I got more hours in that way. So they were the frustrations, and the legislation for the yarn bombing frustrated me, and people wanting to stick to legislation.

LW: Have there been times where, because of how difficult working with people who are suicidal at Inroads, at Mind, have there been times where it’s made you upset or made you not want to volunteer?
[Difficult situations with social work - 15:45 to 16:45]
CH: It hasn’t made me not want to volunteer, but what it has done is its made me realise um, how, um, how, um, important it is to have risk assessments, when your counselling, because you have to check that, and I know I’m much more aware of that working with clients, that I check out the risk to suicide, and also it made me aware of how responsible I was so if I’ve have a client who commits suicide, I could potentially have to go to court about it, and have to show my notes, so what I’ve done is I’ve taken that to supervision, so the supervisor of counsellors are there to take difficult cases too, to make sure you’re behaving ethically, and um, that’s helped me enormously, and so that’s really helped with my growth as a counsellor, and that’s the reason now why I’m training to be a supervisor of counsellors, so it was because I could see what different they made.

LW: So do you think volunteering has changed you as a person?
[Volunteering impacts on personal life - 16:50 to 18:52]
CH: Yes it has, yes definitely, because I’m much more, I’m much more understanding of people who are say homeless or are drug or alcohol addicted, and um, I think that makes me a kinder person, and what I forgot to say, was that something me and my knit friends now do is, I have a friend, a dog walking friend who works at the wet hostel in Cardiff, and he asked me one time whether I had any um, men’s underwear or men’s socks that were no longer needed, because they need that for the, the guys who would come to the homeless hostel, because especially in this whether when it’s raining it is difficult for them to keep their feet dry and keep their underwear dry, and there’s always a need for that, do what I started doing was, now I have a bag in the bedroom so whenever my husbands clothes get a little bit warn they go in, and um, I mentioned to my friends at knitting group that this is what I was doing so now every now and again someone will say I’m cleaning out my husbands stuff, do you want it?

And so they give me a bag full of stuff and I take it to Jeff’s and then he gives his feedback on what happens to the clothes. So for example, one of the women cleared out a lot of really high quality shirts that her husband no longer wore, and so what Jeff did was he, he sorts through it all and he knows all the people who go there, and he had a guy there who was a millionaire, who had been a millionaire and had lost everything, including his wife, home, etc. what he did is that he sorted out the high quality shirts for him because he knew he would really appreciate it, so he tells me all these stories of what happens to this stuff and I tell the women you see, which makes them generate more. It’s really satisfying.

LW: So you think that even if someone doesn’t want to commit time every week to being part of a certain organisation, there is more they can do just to help certain individuals such as the homeless in the community?
[Opportunities for volunteering - 19:04 to 19:35]
CH: Yeah, yeah, and I know there are lots of opportunities for people to volunteer at Christmas time especially, um, because of all these poor people who are homeless, um, it’s a really tough time when you’re not surrounded by your family, makes you feel even more isolated.

So yeah there’s lots more people can do, and you can give stuff, there’s a charity out at the moment for homeless women, doing boxes, of toiletries for homeless women because that’s really hard to get hold of.

LW: So for a young person looking to go into volunteering, do you think that there are career prospects that could come out of it? That they could actually make a career and earn some money after volunteering?
[Career prospects stemming from volunteering - 19:47 to 20:23]
CH: In counselling there certainly is, so I trained with a lot of young people who worked with volunteer organisations and they’ve gone on on to have their own businesses or worked for companies as counsellors, or they’ve set up their own private counselling businesses, um, and um, I think as well people who volunteer in charity shops for example, um, it gives you good experience in lots of skills, so working with people, selling things and um, er, and sorting through stuff.

[Break in recording]
LW: So how did the yarn bombing come about?
[Yarn bombing - 20:30 to 21:31]
CH: I used to go weekly or twice weekly to a shop that existed down Cowbridge road which is a yarn shop and a group of us used to meet there regularly, and one woman said do you fancy doing some yarn bombing? So we all thought yes this would be a really good idea, what can we do? So we did a bit of brainstorming, so I think it must have been quite early in the year so that we decided that we would yarn bomb a tree with daffodils to represent St David day, on St David’s day.

That’s how we got involved, and we’ve, um, following that we did a bit of, um, yarn, sorry, a bit of brainstorming about what else we could do, you know where else we could yarn bomb. Someone had some involvement with Barry and that’s why we wanted to do the Dave Davis statue, and later on when we were turned away from that, somebody suggested about doing to statues down in the Bay, so that’s why we did that.

LW: So do you see a link with what you do and politics?
[Links with politics and volunteering - 21:36 to 22:24]
CH: Um, I think, uh, there’s a link in as much as um you have to get round sometimes the council or whoever owns the property if you want to yarn bomb it. So for example, we talked about yarn bombing the statue in the middle of Thomson’s park.

There’s a statue of a little boy who is naked and we were going to put a pair of pants on him as a joke, but we were told no we couldn’t do that cause of health and safety, so, it sort of rubs against politics, um, but I know um, in Leicester, where they did a lot of yarn bombing, the police noted that following that there was a reduction in crime, so in that respect I think that it can affect politics.

LW: What would you say your biggest achievement has been so far?
[Biggest achievement in volunteering - 22:28 to 23:15]
CH: With yarn bombing it was organising the group that did the shorts on the male statue, and in counselling, in volunteer counselling, the, my best achievement was working with inroads and building up a relationship with the people there. Cause I really enjoyed it cause actually at the time I had a lot of family problems and I was suffering with depression myself, so being able to go there made me get out of the house, so, so you know I wasn’t sitting at home feeling sorry for myself, gave me another outlook, and um, they were really nice people there, which made me feel good, so I could have a laugh there.

LW: What what advice or words of inspiration would you give to volunteers today?
[Words of advice and inspiration - 23:20 to 23:37]
CH: I would say if you’re just thinking about doing it just go and do it, um, there’s lots of organisations that you can volunteer in and everybody has skills, I’m sure that whatever skills you have could be really well used to help out other people, so just do it.

LW: Brilliant. And finally, how would you define volunteering?
[Defining volunteering - 23:41 - 24:03]
CH: Volunteering to me is giving up your time to help others, and sometimes it can be for your own benefit in the long run, so what you’re doing is helping an organisation but helping yourself, so for me it was about getting a qualification, or it can be about helping yourself to feel better, and giving yourself a purpose in life.

LW: Brilliant. Is there anything else that you would like to add that I haven’t touched upon?
[Summing up - 24:08 to 24:12]
CH: No I think that’s it, I think we’ve covered all the sort of things that I’ve done.

LW: Okay, thank you very much.
CH: You’re very welcome.

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