St Germain’s Emotional Wellbeing Support Service was established in May 2020, initially as part of the church’s response to Covid-19. It has grown considerably as relationships with city-wide referral agents have developed and is now expanding the capacity of its offer of an open-access, fast-response emotional wellbeing service.

We aim to:

• Facilitate improvement of people’s emotional wellbeing through a guided self-help model that includes providing psychoeducation and teaching evidence-based, solution-focused coping skills and strategies
• Improve access to secondary services
• Relieve some of the pressure on secondary services by providing an early intervention that can prevent the escalation of need
• Ensure that people get help at their time of need, receiving a prompt response that can help reduce the risk of suicide and self-harm for at risk service users
• Reduce the stigma attached to accessing mental health support through normalising and providing a non-clinical support setting and language around mental health issues that is accessible and has a friendly, informal feel