Outreach Contact Project
Albert Glynn is the face of Exchange House to many Travellers who are homeless and living rough. The main focus of outreach contact work is keeping in touch with those people who have become marginalised within their own community and often their own families. Outreach provides a contact point for many such people, young or old, who otherwise would have no links to service providers. The project may involve visiting people in prisons, hospitals and courts. It also entails walking the streets, being a familiar face to vulnerable, homeless Travellers. The problems which face the users of this service include family conflict and addiction, mainly alcohol, and more recently illegal drugs.

The Outreach Contact Project provides a flexible needs-based response to a very marginalised group of people. Working closely with other agencies, the Outreach worker may facilitate family visits outside the prison to begin the process of reintegration of someone due for release. Albert has worked with UK Social Services to bring families together from both Ireland and the UK where it is felt that would be beneficial. He is sometimes the only visitor to a prisoner serving a long sentence.

This work is important as it targets the most vulnerable in our society, those who have given up on society and feel society has given up on them. It aims to offer them a sense of self worth and the possibility of reintegration into a society from which they feel rejected.

Where service users are unable to come into the Exchange House office, an outreach visit can be arranged.