A counselling service has been forced to move to a remote operation – after coronavirus meant all face to face work had to be suspended.
Wellspring Counselling, based in Nailsea, offers counselling services to hundreds of people living across North Somerset.
It offers support to adults as well as those aged between 11 and 18 years-old outside of school hours.
It also offers early intervention cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to young people.
Four wellbeing practitioners work in four local schools as well as out in the community to help young people.
All the adult sessions take place in Nailsea while the work with young people happens in Nailsea, Backwell and Portishead.
The CBT sessions are run at four secondary schools in North Somerset – Clevedon, Backwell, Nailsea and St Katherines.
There are group sessions as well as one to one sessions.
The charity has been forced to suspend all its face to face sessions with clients due to the coronavirus, and instead move temporarily to remote working.
The charity, which recently celebrated its 25 th birthday, received £5,000 from the Quartet Community Foundation Coronavirus 2020 Response Fund, supported by Bristol Live’s Arms Around Bristol campaign to support the move.
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The money has been used to fund new equipment for staff and volunteers to allow them to switch completely to a remote operation, ensuring client's needs were still met.
Wellspring Counselling director Sarah Rees said: “Usually all of our sessions are done face to face.
“But due to coronavirus we had to switch to remote working for all of our staff and volunteers.
“The funding has allowed us to quickly source and provide new equipment for our teams to allow them to work at home.
“We have also had mobile hand sets donated to us by the public and have also had to organise new monthly mobile phone contracts to ensure we can keep sessions going.
“We are doing sessions either by phone or other platforms online.”
The funding will also help provide additional clinical supervision for the charity’s workers.
It will also help subsidise the adult therapy sessions.
Normally clients make a contribution for their session to help towards the cost.
'It has been wonderful'
Mrs Rees added: “Due to the situation with coronavirus and people struggling with their finances we expect the level of the contributions to drop and the funding from the Quartet Community Foundation will help us to continue subsidising these sessions more than we do already.”
Mrs Rees said she expected demand for counselling to grow as people struggle with their mental health during the ongoing UK wide lockdown.
“The money from the Quartet Community Foundation Coronavirus Response Fund allowed us to act quickly to a changing situation and make sure people could still access our services,” said Mrs Rees.
“The Quartet Community Foundation has supported us in the past and it has been wonderful that it has stepped in again.
“We expect it will be between three and six months until we can resume normal face to face sessions and the funding will help us get through this period.”
Mrs Rees said the charity also expected to see a demand for its services as the coronavirus outbreak deepens.
“If people are happy to be supported by phone or online we would urge them to access our services,” she said.
“We want them to get in touch and we can add them to the waiting list.”
Anyone who would like support can call 01275 810897 or email reception@wellspringcounselling.org.uk.
People wanting to support the Arms Around Bristol campaign can do so here
