GASPED (Giving Advice and Support for People in Emotional Distress), supports people in emotional distress who live mostly within the District of Wakefield. Gasped originally set up to support families affected by their loved ones drug and alcohol issues delivering a range of emotional and practical support. As we developed as an organisation we became involved with other addictive behaviours and the impact they have on the whole family and moved into whole family support. The impact on families affected by drugs and alcohol also led Gasped to supporting families affected by domestic abuse, anger aggression, low self- esteem, bereavement including suicide.
The services Gasped deliver include counselling, 1-2-1 support, group or peer support, alternative therapies, advice information, signposting, formal and informal training. Pre-Covid-19 these services were delivered throughout the District of Wakefield, during the Covid-19 outbreak Gasped has continued to deliver both practical and emotional support via the telephone and online.
Gasped help matters, in that we are a community organisation supporting local people many who are classed as hard to reach, we reach people because we are trusted by the local community and less feared than mainstream services, we have a very short waiting list because we believe if someone needs emotional support they need it now and not go on a waiting list for months, we are non-judgemental and do not have a fixed length of time counselling (for example 6or 10 weeks) but believe in co production or supporting the person to get where they want to be.
Gasped work in partnership with other organisations, we are very excited to part of a new initiative funded by Wakefield CCG called Safe Space, the lead organisation id Touchstone Leeds and the other partner is Spectrum people. Safe Space initiative is about supporting people in crisis out of office hours who would normally go to A&E departments or the police, this is a very new initiative currently working from 6.00pm until midnight on a Friday and Saturday evening and soon to be Sunday evening but we hope it will move to7 evenings a week
Gasped deliver 1-2-1 advice information and support on a range of mental health issues,
We counsel people in blocks of 6 sessions whereas at every sixth session the counselling is jointly reviewed between the client and the counsellor to decide on another 6 sessions. Counselling is currently delivered via the telephone but pre-covid-19 counselling was delivered face-to-face throughout the district of wakefield which enabled people to access emotional support who did not have the disposable income to travel into Wakefield.
Pre-Covid -19 gasped also delivered a range of alternative therapies including Reiki and EFT Emotional Freedom Technique which we hope to deliver again as soon as it is safe to do so.
Training which Gasped deliver is both formal and informal, we have also developed our own drug and alcohol rehabilitation programme which was funded by Wakefield Council and Lloyds Bank Foundation, while the programme was successful and very cost efficient unfortunately that funding has come to an end.
