Rhoda Emlyn-Jones OBE has developed a wide range of services over the past 40 years that deliver proven effective interventions to thousands of people and families. Her successful Option 2 service works intensively with families where parents experience substance use difficulties and whose children are at risk of being taken into care.
She supported the Welsh Government in the roll-out of Integrated Family Support Services (IFSS), which draws heavily on the learning from Option 2. Rhoda currently works in an independent capacity supporting health and social care organisations throughout the UK in strategic workforce development.
She was awarded Welsh Woman of the Year in 2007, and an OBE in 2009 for services to disadvantaged families.
‘It Goes Back To My Childhood’ [3’43”]
Rhoda’s involvement in the field and her approach are influenced by her childhood and the time her father Alun was drinking excessively to help him deal with the deep grief he experienced after the loss of his beloved wife Prue (when Rhoda was 14 years old).
Alun, an extremely loving man, was now looking after four girls, the youngest just four years old. The children understood that their father was just trying to function to stay with them, rather than neglect his responsibilities, which was a very different perspective to everyone else, who thought that if he loved them, he should just stop drinking. From that time, Rhoda realised that ‘we needed to see people from the challenges and problems they faced, not the challenges and problems they caused.’
Alun provided so much support for people with alcohol-related issues. There are still three rehabs existing in Wales because of him. He did all this voluntarily. He used to bring home people who had nowhere to live and were drinking on the streets. Rhoda and her sisters used to listen to them.
When she was about 18, Rhoda started to go out on a ‘soup run’ at night. She noticed with the people she engaged with that it was not the charity of the soup, but the human connection, that mattered. She learnt so much from the people with whom she engaged.