One of the main reasons I left the day job as a Social Worker where I worked in the area of Mental Health and Children’s Services for many years was because we were mainly only treating symptoms and rarely had the resources to truly get to the source of people’s difficulties. Medication and short-term counselling only touches the surface when people have made contact with a mental health system. By then the problems are deep and often generational. So I left that world with the intention to engage in work with people that was preventative. Building people’s capacities so they never had to engage with a system that would only ever manage their symptoms. Over the past six years of engaging in this type of work here is what I have learned..