MindOut, the LGBTQ mental health service opened the doors on its new LGBTQ counselling service on October 1.
LGTBQ Counselling at MindOut provides relational counselling, which is not goal orientated, or about telling you what to do.
Their LGBTQ counsellors work to develop a trusting and confidential therapeutic relationship with you so that you can feel safe to work through the issues which are troubling you.
Requests for counselling started arriving before the new service had opened and have steadily risen since. In the first 10 weeks they have had 48 people asking for an assessment.
They aim to respond to requests as quickly as possible and everyone has been offered an appointment to come in and discuss their request within 7 days, often sooner.
They then match the availability of each client to a counsellor, one of their team of 11. Again they are keeping the wait to start counselling as short as they can, the quickest was 4 days, the longest wait so far has been 3 weeks.
“Thank you so much for such a fast response, that’s brilliant”, said a counselling client.
At the moment, 25 people have started counselling. 15 people have not gone ahead with their request and 8 are booked in for an assessment.
MindOut are presently recruiting more volunteer counsellors. They have space for another 5, and would particularly welcome applications from BAME, trans and non-binary counsellors.
All their counsellors receive regular clinical supervision from their team of 4 supervisors as well as support from the Counselling Coordinator and the rest of the MindOut team.
Minimum commitment is three hours a week. If you are interested please call 01273 234800 or email george.tidey@mindout.org.uk.
George Tidey, Counselling Coordinator, said: “It’s wonderful to be able to offer such a good service to our community, we have a brilliant team of counsellors, and I look forward to a busy year ahead”.
MindOut offers a range of support, including advice and information, advocacy, peer support and have an online support service open out of hours.
For more information, click here:, or call them on 01273 234839 or email: info@mindout.org.uk
Keys stats:
♦ Quickest referral time, four days
♦ Longest referral time, three weeks
♦ Number of counsellors 11
♦ Number of referrals 46
♦ How quickly people are seen for assessment from point of application – within 7 days generally sometimes faster
♦ How quickly some people have been allocated a counsellor – 14 days
♦ How long the longest wait has been so far – 34 days but they were assessed before the service opened and were aware this would mean a wait
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