Time to Talk West Berkshire provides a free at the point of delivery counselling service for young people aged 11-25 who are resident, in education, training, working or registered with a GP in West Berkshire, helping them deal with their specific challenges in a sustainable way. We do this by working with our team of 25 volunteer counsellors to offer counselling sessions at our central Newbury office to young people who self-refer or come to us through GPs, CAMHS, schools, family, carers and other professional services and through an outreach service operating in four local schools and a local GP surgery. We also run a range of courses in areas such as self- esteem, stress and bereavement, in local schools and youth groups as well as mindfulness training for young people.
We are the only charity in West Berkshire offering counselling that is free at the point of delivery to those under 18 (over 80% of our clients). Last year we saw 317 young people for 2132 sessions.
We want to make a positive impact on the mental health of the young people in West Berkshire. We do this by being able to maintain our current service whereby we offer a minimum of 44 counselling sessions per week at our Newbury office as well as maintaining our Outreach service in 4 schools and a rural GP surgery.
We act as an early intervention service to support young people in the area before they hit crisis levels. Many young people with mental health needs do not meet the threshold for treatment through CAMHS but still require a safe place to discuss their problems. We fill this gap, reducing the risk of these problems becoming long term issues. Over 50% of our referrals come to us through their GP or CAMHS themselves. Our waiting lists averages 31 young people at any one time and we get an average of 18 new referrals each month.
