Brief history of Turnaround
Turnaround Resources E1 was established in 2000 and opened in 2001 by Mo Mowlem and Louose Casey in April 2001 as a response to gaps in the services provided by the housing agencies for the homeless. Whilst the shelter they provided was better than no shelter at all, they did little to advance the people they housed. They had poor liaison with local mental health or drug abuse services and the job centres. Many of their staff thought life on benefits was the norm for their clients and did nothing to encourage them into work or voluntary activities.
Turnaround was founded from a belief that inactivity saps morale and leads to hopelessness. The aim was to establish an activity centre as an alternative to isolation in the hostel room or aimless wandering in the streets. Classes and courses are available to the unemployed and/or homeless at little or no cost but these can barely occupy someone more than six to twelve hours a week. What about the rest of the time? The hostels at that time contained chronic alcoholics and drug addicts. Being in such company all day is damaging to morale but where else is there to go without money?
The centre was to be somewhere that people could treat as a surrogate work place; somewhere they could be active every day for all of the day, if they chose to, away from their hostel room and it was to be a drug and alcohol free environment. The project took over the premises of a charity that had folded and abandoned its computers. They were networked, linked to the internet and made available as a resource to be active on.
The need that the founders identified has proved to be real, lasting and extensive. The Resource has never been idle with queues to use it at times. It has been re-equipped twice since its foundation with charitable capital grants. It has twelve computers available to clients in the main resource room and two in a study room for those with particularly worthwhile projects.