A window into LandWorks

“I left in 2023. I think I left a week before I joined my work… almost two years, yeah. It was two years; I think it was. I think it was after Covid. I didn’t do many days here to start with. Obviously after a couple of weeks here I did five days a week. I was a bit sceptical to start with. Most of us are to be honest, but once you realise it’s alright you come more often.

The highlights of being here were everything to be honest. I loved everything. I’d be outside, working outside, maintenance, and doing the cooking with you. I cooked with everyone to be honest. I cooked with quite a few people. There wasn’t anything I didn’t like, I just wasn’t a fan … you know, I did the workshop, obviously pottery inside, I wasn’t a huge fan of that. I didn’t mind it, but I’d rather be outside doing something to be honest.

My placement here, obviously, has helped me a lot because it’s different to say you doing hours at the back of some warehouse or something like that, picking up gum and litter, you know, you can actually learn skills. They trust you with tools and stuff with the woodwork, you learn about gardening. It gives you all the social skills, but it gives you work ability skills as well, you know, some people from here have got jobs, you know, some people work in the garden, and they’ve gone to college and are getting jobs in it. Obviously for me I do something different, my job, it’s a bit different, but I think in a way it has actually helped to change my mindset because before this I never worked. I never worked before I came here, so I never really had the work experience life, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a real lot because everyone here is proper behaved, and they treat you with respect. That’s what I like about LandWorks. It’s all positive. There’s nothing negative I can really say about it to be honest.

Yeah, working with different people is what you’ve gotta do when you work. You’ve gotta do people skills. I got quite good people skills from being here. You’d be with loads of different kinds of people, yeah, everyone has loads of different opinions and you get along with each other. I think that’s quite helped me to be fair coz I fit in quite well at work. I get on with everyone. I can adapt to different things and situations. Yeah, I’d say being here definitely helped me.

…if you come to somewhere like this, they give you food, everyone treats you with respect, it’s like a little family, it’s like a community and everyone comes back here for the right reasons, not for the wrong reasons. They love it here. It’s absolutely brilliant and you know, the people here show everyone. If you don’t re-offend, look at the stuff you can do, you know.

I’ve got the day off today, yeah. Thought I’d come and see everyone and say hello.

Work ethic as well. Obviously you get your tasks for the day and obviously in your head you’d like to complete those tasks in the day. So if you get a few, you kind of push yourself to go faster and once you do that it’s easier for you and it becomes natural. Yeah, I think, not just for me, it probably does for a lot of people, a bit of work ethic as well … getting here at the same time, working, lunch time, as soon as lunch finishes back to work again. I think it does set people up well … a routine.

I don’t think there’s anything you could improve at LandWorks, but like I say, I think you could expand and help more other places. That’s what I think would be best, I think. You could have different things, yeah, you could have different things to be honest. I dunno, just thinking of something … yeah, I think it would better would be to have more of LandWorks at other places.

There’s nothing like it. There’s nothing like it at all. You get skills out of it, obviously social skills, like I said before, working skills. I say again, that’s it, it’s literally social … for people to go back into the community and make you feel comfortable. I know some people struggle with stuff like that.

People here understand and everyone gets treated fairly. It doesn’t matter about your age, your colour, your gender, anything like that, that’s irrelevant here. It’s like a fresh new start for some people. You all meet each other, and you get along really well.

I think I’ve realised sometimes you’ve got to move on. It’s one of those big things in life you’ve just got to do, everyone has to do it. Obviously some people deal with it differently to others, but yeah, just get on with it, you know. You can always come back, it’s not like you’ve gone forever, you know, you can always come back and see people. That’s how I think of it. I don’t think it’s gone forever. If you think like that it’s not gonna help you.

LandWorks can only do so much for you. Most of it is down to you and that’s the same for everyone, you know. The people who work here … most of it is down to the individuals themselves. I know LandWorks try their hardest to help people and they do actually help. I think it all depends on what mentality you’ve got. If you haven’t got a very good mentality … like I say, a lot of people struggle coz they know when they come out of here they go to shit, you know, they hang around with shit people, do shit things. For some people it’s quite tough […] If it was up to Chris, everyone here, he’d buy everyone accommodation, but he doesn’t … he can’t. Out there it’s all the government. LandWorks doesn’t control what happens out there…”