American artist Andy Warhol is quoted as once having said: “They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” This poignant phrase doesn’t only stand for the artistic revolution that Warhol supported in the 1960s but also highlights a fundamental growth that has occurred in the realm of self-care and mental health. Although professionals from the social and therapeutic domain still feel there is more that can be done to overcome the taboo of seeking help for one’s personal ails, one cannot deny the courage people employ to seek help and the radical quest professionals have embarked on to show that social and therapeutic interventions can help address a multitude of difficulties people encounter in their lives.

This is where the Agency for Community and Therapeutic Services (ACTS) comes in. Although this is a newly formed agency under the wing of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services (FSWS), it carries services that have a history of over 25 years of experience; the first ever community service in Malta in Cottonera and one of the first social services offered by the government at the time. Over the years, it has become clear that people want to address their difficulties and change their circumstances and this has become possible because of services of this kind that began a movement toward supporting this very change.

Today, with eight community services and four teams of multi-disciplinary professionals offering home-based therapy and parenting programmes across all of Malta, the evolution of community-based services has reached a new level of importance. ACTS is all about prevention – using the services at its disposal to support individuals and families from reaching the point of no return and supporting them to find consistency and stability. Family preservation and community action and empowerment are a crucial part of the mission of ACTS in order to ensure that people are truly supported in reaching their social and therapeutic goals. This is done by offering personalized plans and support on their home turf for any variety of social difficulty people may have.

Gone are the days when professionals are the know-it-alls of people’s lives. Rather, ACTS professionals empower people to contribute to and own the change that they wish to enact. It is only in this way that people can be truly committed and motivated toward the change that they wish to achieve. People become the focus of interventions this way and have agency to attain reachable and realistic goals. ACTS believes in the strength and abilities of the people and the community and utilizes them to encourage meaningful change.

Partnerships with the people in the community are incredible opportunities for the community to come together and for professionals to work with an entire system, irrespective of the differences between us and refusing to be defined by the difficulties people face. Through the implementation of community projects, initiatives, one-to-one interventions and parenting programs, ACTS professionals address the needs of the community based on constant communication and collaboration with the same community as one team. Informal settings like these create opportunities for safe spaces to be created, relationships to be cultivated, hidden suffering to be unearthed and supported and oppression to be quashed. Only immersion in and with the community allows for this to be possible and is what sets the services of ACTS apart from centralised services.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the way communities function, yet it is out of this very adversity that opportunities to rebuild will present themselves, with ACTS professionals at the front-line to assist in any way possible. Despite the devastating force of the pandemic, communities rallied together to defy the odds and support the most vulnerable around them.

Educator and philosopher Paolo Freire wrote, “Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” It is with this sentiment that ACTS professionals aspire toward offering genuine and humble social and therapeutic services that revel in the joy of the success of the people it serves.

Joseph Antoncich, Services Manager at the Agency for Community and Therapeutic Services within the Foundation for Social Welfare Services