Community Guidance in Craigmillar

My final placement was at Adult Learning Link in Craigmillar and for a number of reasons I was thoroughly looking forward to it, firstly as my background is in youth and community work so being based in smaller projects in the heart of a community is where I feel most at home , second Mark the guidance worker there had already been into speak to the class about his work and he turned out to be quite an inspiring and colourful character so I was looking forward to what I might learn and thirdly the chance to do some adult guidance great! It's quite a small team at ALL comprised of an Administrator, Community Education worker and Adult Guidance Worker, the office had a shop front was based on the main street and so easily visible and accessible to the residents of Craigmillar ,consequently business was booming as people could either just drop in or come in for prearranged appointments. ALL provides a range of services from careers advice, C.V writing, job serach skills, redundancy counselling plus many others. As you may know alot has been happening in Craigmillar over the past 10 years as it is the subject of mass regeneration, most of the old flats have been torn down or refurbished this has improved the area tremendously from a cosmetic perspective, as far as the local community goes to some extent it has become fragmented, many people were decanted out during the regeneration some returned once their houses were ready for reoccupation and some stayed away as they had built new lives elsewhere. I mention this as it quickly became clear from the people coming through our doors how this had effected the diversity of the local population, there was a much greater ethnic mix than I was expecting, people from Africa, Pakistan , Egypt, Poland to name but a few, also many others had been attracted into the area the new good affordable housing. This has had a considerable effect on shaping the services provided at ALL the local community has in effect molded the service consequently it is meeting that communities specific needs, that is one of the beauty of guidance based in the community, we are not just providing a branded homoginised service it becomes tailor made. The other thing that really impressed me was great local knowledge the workers at ALL had,they have a high profile in the community, have good relationships with the local people, basically they have their fingers on the pulse. How do they achieve this? I suppose quite simply they are very welcoming, they get to spend time with people and build relationships,often people will come for more than one visit, some people drop in on a weekly basis just to have a quick chat or odd querie cleared up. It really is part of that community, couldn't help thinking though how great it would be if they could open it up to the young people of Craigmillar, maybe incorporating some outreach work I wonder what would happen then?