Jack Martel

‘A day never passes with Jack in the office without anyone laughing or smiling,’ said a nominator of Jack Martel. 

Now in his eighth year as a Support, Time and Recovery (STaR) worker within the Oberlands Recovery and Wellbeing Service team, Mr Martel said he was grateful to be nominated for the Angel of the Year award. 
Mr Martel works to support people with mental health difficulties on their recovery journey, identifying service users’ personal goals and working to achieve them. He facilitates this through psycho-educational support groups and one-to-one anxiety support.
Mr Martel has been responsible for developing a gardening group in partnership with Edible Guernsey, a creative writing group at the Guille-Alles Library and a therapeutic Dungeons & Dragons group. 
The latter project has been so successful that Mr Martel is currently involved in a research study exploring how tabletop role-playing games can support young adults with mental health difficulties and neurodiversity. 
Establishing people’s creative outlets and building their confidence is at the heart of Mr Martel’s work. 
‘Recovery isn’t always about dramatic changes,’ he said. 
‘It’s the small victories that make the biggest difference. Being able to play even a small part in someone’s journey, be it as their key worker or just a facilitator to one of the groups they attend, is a real privilege.’ 
‘Jack is proud of his Guernsey roots and strives to improve the mental health of people by his unwavering kindness and diligent approach to complex and demanding work,’ said an anonymous nominator. 
‘He is kind, thoughtful, sensitive, efficient, humorous, respectful and compassionate.’