Social justice can be defined to have different meanings depending on the context. There are many ways to consider what this means on a social, economic, cultural, systemic or individual basis. The term is important to our work and vision as a charity, social justice informs the approach we adopt towards people who access our services and it underpins the outlook of the charity.
At the Brick we adopt a person led, transitional and strength-based approach to working with individuals, we aim to acknowledge people’s freedom of choice and work in a way that accepts what someone chooses or doesn’t choose for themselves at any given time. We build trusting relationships with those we work with by trusting people to make the decision of what to change and when to make the change in their own time. The result is that we are present for any given period of transition or tough times without judgement or steering someone based on our own knowledge and experience, whether it be professional or personal. We aim to empower people to take back control of their situation in a way that works for them.
We acknowledge people’s rights and freedoms as a human and offer an open and honest way of working. As well as allowing the person to lead their transition out of homelessness or other temporary tough times, we also broker person led opportunities within the community and wider, so that people may access meaningful experiences. Having meaningful opportunities decided by the person and how or when to access these is important in the development of internal and external assets; as humans we all naturally possess existing strengths or skills that we can draw on to guide our choices and actions as an individual. We work in a way that facilitates a person to identify their own assets and develop these, which will ultimately enable someone to move towards living an independent and fulfilling lifestyle. Positive changes and transitions are sustainable when the person has accepted responsibility for their choices and actions and have led their own transitional journey, rather than been pigeon holed by generic target driven influences and preconceived ideas of achievement.