If you haven’t already, please meet our lovely Jan Pruden. Jan served CAPS this winter as our night stay coordinator, and is now fulfilling her role as a service coordinator. She is an amazing asset to our team!
We asked Jan to answer a couple questions, and to give us a snapshot of why she loves working for CAPS! This is what she said:
“I have enjoyed working with CAPS (off and on) for 5 years. Currently I am a Services and Night Stay Administrator. God uses me as an encourager, a cheerleader and a helpful problem solver. My background is coaching and teaching.
My husband Jesse and I will celebrate 25 years of marriage in August. We adore our 24 year old daughter Mary, our 21 year old son Trey and our bonus son Randall Allen and our grandson Oliver – 2 and a half years old!!!
I am from Virginia Beach and our journey brought us to Suffolk (where my husband is originally from) 9 years ago and we now live in Portsmouth.
My favorite thing about helping people at CAPS is being able to take the time to share compassion. I truly love the sense of relief people show when I say we are going to try and help. I actually say – “we want to treat you like we would like to be treated.”
I can’t tell you how amazing it feels to actually watch the dread and despair lift from another human being when they realize you are kind and you want to help. Quite often CAPS is showing a new client that we may not be the final answer to their dilemma, but that we truly want to help them find options and solutions. We share specifically why we are giving another phone number and another resource and not just saying “here call these other people.” We want people to know we care and when we can (depending on our limited budget) we want to offer relief. It takes a whole lot of courage for a client to come into an office or call out to another person and ask for help. We understand that feeling and we try (very hard) to alleviate that frantic fear.
Just last week, I was blessed to pray with at least eight clients. One client who witnessed our staff praying with another person said to me – “Even if you can’t help me, I think that the way you treated that lady was awesome. It really impressed me how you showed you care!” This and many other reasons are why we do what we do!
