Kevin

Welfare

After 20 years on a benefit, building the motivation to change his life and stay on track has been a tough but rewarding challenge for Kevin.

It was Kevin’s growing desperation with an increasingly unmanageable life that originally spurred him to get off a benefit. Five years ago, with his marriage on the rocks, he approached The Salvation Army for budget advice.

A Salvation Army budget advisor helped him establish a three-year plan to get rid of what had become a crippling amount of debt. Kevin stuck to the plan and is now debt-free. During that time he received a food parcel every month to help keep the family afloat.

But budgeting advice wasn’t the only help Kevin was seeking.

After 20 years on a benefit, and in an attempt to save his marriage, Kevin was looking to learn new social skills that would help turn his life around and hopefully save his marriage.

‘I’d had a horrible childhood and I became an adult at a very young age because, as children, we had had no real parenting and no idea of common decency,’ Kevin says. ‘When I came to The Salvation Army, I had no social skills, I did not know how to get a job and I was an aggressive and intimidating person. I trusted no one.’

The Salvation Army offered Kevin parttime volunteer work as a driver picking up and delivering household items for the local Family Store. At the same time, Salvation Army staff counselled him on how to interact with others in a healthy way and how to operate within a team.

Kevin says the key lessons he learned from The Salvation Army were that the community is really one big family and that respect of others and oneself is paramount. ‘This was important because when I was growing up I never learned how to respect others.’

He was then offered part-time paid work and three months ago became a fulltime driver for The Salvation Army—his first job in two decades.

Making changes to his life hasn’t been easy, says Kevin, and he knows that he still has a lot of work ahead.