10 Years of THCAN

Thank you to everyone who attended our event “10 years of THCAN” on 6^th of June, we hope to schedule another THCAN towards the end of the year and I hope people who could not make it this time might be able to come to the next!

You can view the 10 Years of THCAN and the THCAN Referral Site presentations by tapping the thumbnail images below:-

10 Years of THCAN Presentation-thumbnail

It was a pleasure to have over 50 people representing the advice sector, local authority, councillors, ex-volunteers and THCAN referral registered organisation attending our ’10 Years of THCAN‘ event, organised by Island Advice Centre and hosted by Bromley By Bow Centre to celebrate the volunteer work, THCAN referral and discuss the evident link between health & Social Welfare.

The speakers included:

Jo Ellis

Jo Ellis, training coordinator from Island Advice Centre, who gave a summary of the THCAN volunteer project which, over the past 20 years, has achieved amazing results with recruiting and training over 300 local people to become advice workers, resulting in many of the trainees/volunteers being employed in local Tower Hamlets advice agencies.

Rashal Ali

Rashal Ali, Bromley By Bow Centre Advice team leader, spoke about his personal achievements and experience as a volunteer/trainee, he participated in the volunteer training project class 2019/2020 and completed the Learning to Advise training, obtained an NVQ Level 3 in Advice and Guidance, and as a result was employed by Bromley by Bow centre.

Sarah Sauvat

Sarah Sauvat, manager of Island Advice Centre, spoke about the THCAN referrals portal, an online referrals system that was set up in May 2021, a fully local network of organisations based in Tower Hamlets that assist residents. She explained how the portal was developed, how organisations/Tower Hamlets workers can register and make/receive referrals to/from each other using the portal and explained how it is now used by almost 400 individuals, 43 organisations and resulted in 2,786 referrals since its onset.

Dan Hopewell

Dan Hopewell, Director of Knowledge and Innovation, London Region Social Prescribing gave a very interesting presentation on the well documented link between poverty and health, and how benefit, housing and debt advice can ease this link. Dan has just worked along Island Advice on a GLA funded pilot that is researching the impact of training up social prescribers to Link Workers, so they can identify benefit gains and help patients alongside the advice sector.