Having been established over 50 years ago, we are trusted by healthcare professionals, schools, individuals, parents and families to provide high quality mental health support to people in need.
Our team of Wellbeing Coaches bring with them decades of experience. We are passionate about supporting our local communities and last year we worked with over 5000 individuals across Maidstone, Ashford and Swale; collectively, they made over 12000 attendances to our services.
For adults, our wellbeing services continue to provide lifesaving support. Between April 2023 and March 2024, our drop-in cafés in Maidstone and Ashford saw 1659 attendances. These sessions prevented 92 visits to A&E, 42 calls to 999, 58 attempts of an individual taking their own life, and 108 instances of self-harm. All individuals felt the service supported their mental health and wellbeing and 78% reported that it helped reduce feelings of isolation.
During the same period, our Affordable Counselling service provided 3850 hours of support to 286 individuals; 100% reported that the sessions helped to improve their mental health and/or wellbeing.
We are keen to respond to the needs and interests of our communities and with this in mind, we provide specially themed groups and courses. Among others, we are currently running a walking group, an arts group, a Menopause Mind and Movement course and Coping with Life course. In the last twelve months, we also piloted specialist support for perinatal individuals as well as a Food and Mood course in Ashford and are now exploring opportunities to roll these out more widely across the region.
During the trial of our Menopause Mind and Movement courses, we had 52 attendances; 100% reported the course had taught them useful techniques for managing stress and anxiety, 100% also shared with us that the movement element of the sessions had positively impacted their mood.
As well as providing support at our scheduled groups and activities, our Wellbeing Coaches answered over 1000 phone calls from individuals in need of immediate wellbeing support including from adults experiencing suicidal ideation, parents struggling to access timely support for their young person and adults experiencing low mood.
Alongside our work with adults, we also provide specialist support for children and young people. Last year, we reached 1537 under 18s providing a range of activities including our 1-2-1 and group Cognitive Behavioural Courses. 51 young people benefited from our 1-2-1 support; Wellbeing and Resilience Action Plans are intensive, weekly interventions that are tailored to each individual’s needs. 100% of participants showed a direct improvement to the specific areas they identified as a priority; 90% reported they were better able to manage their mental health and wellbeing and 80% reported a decrease in feelings of anxiety and low mood.
Our new Look Out course was delivered to 386 young people teaching them how to spot the signs that they or a friend might be struggling with their mental health and informing them where they can get more help if needed; 95% of attendees found the session useful.
As well as our Wellbeing Support, we are also committed to raising awareness and offer a range of training courses so that people better understand common mental health problems, how they can support themselves and others and what services exist in the local area that they can benefit from. Last year, our team trained 1933 individuals in the community. Our Adult Suicide Prevention course and Youth Mental Health and Suicide Awareness course continue to be particularly popular. Following these sessions, 99% of attendees on our adult course felt more confident in reducing suicide risk and 95% of attendees on our youth course reported their knowledge of suicide prevention had increased.
We are extremely grateful to all of our funders for their continued support. Thanks to donations, grant funding and volunteers, we are able to reach thousands of individuals every year providing lifesaving interventions every day.