Liam Sower, South Western Area Health Board, visits a training centre in Naas regularly to give workshops to the trainees. Here is one of the reports following a series of visits....

Liam and his team came to us on six different occasions throughout the year; 1st, 8th, 15th June, 28th September, 5th and 12th October. With the trainees Liam covered alcohol and drug issues, as well as sexually transmittable diseases. Below Paula gives an account of his visits.

"I had been on the Project for all of one week I encountered one of the most passionate and empathic people it has ever been my pleasure to meet. We had been told during the week that 'Liam', an outreach worker from the Eastern Health Board, was coming to speak to us about sexually transmittable diseases - I was quite honestly horrified! Here was a group of people who I barely knew and I was expected to sit with them for an entire morning and discuss a subject, which I would never even consider discussing with my closest friends. However, I had not yet met Liam! Initially, my participation within the group was rather stilted, however Liam was like an Evangelical preacher inciting and exciting his audience and within the first hour I was answering and offering opinions quite as eagerly as the rest of the group - most of whom had already made his acquaintance. We had two further sessions with Liam and his team over the following weeks and I along with the others looked forward to them eagerly. From a personal point of view, Liam, Peter and the rest of the group's passion and sympathy for the people they worked with, addicts, recovering addicts, HIV patients, those with full blown AIDS and people with sexually transmitted diseases, and the way in which they provoked discussion and soul searching on the individual's part prompted me to re-think many of my attitudes towards those whose lives are touched by drugs and sexual diseases. Liam's visits prompted many interesting discussions within the group both at his sessions and within the environs of our respective training rooms. We look forward to his return and that of his co-workers eagerly."

Paula, Trainee