“Yeah but what is it you guys really do” someone asked me.
“Put plasters on hedgehogs or what?”

Answering that question is actually harder than you might think.

On the surface we save animals. That’s it. I mean, that is plenty, don’t get me wrong but that is what we do. We take injured animals, we do our uttermost to make them better and then we release them back to the wild. Animals that can’t be released or re-homed but still live a happy and pain-free life stay with us.

But we do so more than that and to give you an example I will tell you my story.

I use to work with homeless people in Sweden before I moved to the UK 10 years ago. It was an extremely rewarding job but also constant and quite often heartbreaking. After a few years of always being there my body and mind said enough and I crashed.
I can’t even begin to explain how horrible that time was –
there I was, an over achiever unable to achieve even the simplest of things. I had to move in with my mum because I couldn’t get myself to leave the bed. I didn’t want to die but I didn’t want to exist either. I won’t bore you with details but what I can tell you is that without Hallswood I don’t know where I would be today.

So how did that happen you ask? Well, the crash left me with absolutely no confidence and bad anxiety.

Finding a way back is really hard because you have that inner voice telling you all the things you can not do. To gather the mental strength to actually walk in to the charity shop that day asking if they needed volunteers…
Wow…
My mind kept telling me that there was nothing I could offer them. Useless as I felt I was.

Today, well here I am. I manage the charity shop I thought I had nothing to offer and the reason I got here is the way Hallswood treat people. It gave me a safe place to get my confidence back. It gave me support when I needed it and a soft kick up my backside when I needed that.

It gave me a place to grow again and I am not the only one.

The little known part of Hallswood is what it does for people. We welcome people as they are and let them help us in the way they can. We have so many stories but they are not mine to tell but I want to you know that side of what we do. We help animals, the human kind too