A crisis service provider in Perth has won an award for helping to deter suicides.
The Lighthouse for Perth has been named suicide prevention service of the year 2021 at the Prestige Scotland Awards.
In 2021 the Lighthouse began offering help to school pupils feeling under strain, the only reach out of this kind to operate in rural schools as well as Perth city.
Manager of the telephone and in-person contact service based in St Paul’s Square Sharon Thomas was overjoyed at the award honour given to her team: “Although the Lighthouse was formed in 2015, we only started our support services last year, so we were blown away to have this recognition already,” said Sharon.
“We are so grateful that the hard work of all our staff, volunteers and supporting agencies has been recognised through this award and would like to thank each and every one of them for their dedication, support and continuing donations to allow us to continue our growth.
“Since moving to The Neuk where we are collocated with Anchor House services, we have seen a weekly increase in demand, partly driven by COVID and the effect this has had on our community.”
Worryingly, Sharon revealed young people - teenagers - were an expanding demographic which was contacting the service: “I think the big difference between our service and other providers is that we deal with anyone from age 12+ where there is not a lot of help.
“We have been so overwhelmed by referrals from our younger cohort, we have had to fast track our three year strategy which has been achieved in one year.
“This has saw us provide outreach provision in our rural schools throughout Perth and Kinross as well as providing support to our city based schools.”
