Support

Emotional support can be vital for mental health and emotional wellbeing, providing a way to help people identify their desired outcomes and set achievable goals to reach those outcomes.  Through this approach, we plan, guide, encourage and support people to work towards achieving meaningful goals in a specified timescale, recognising and celebrating their personal growth and achievement.

Many people seek our support primarily for accurate and reliable information.  Because information and online resources can often be confusing or incorrect, we make it a priority to provide clear and trustworthy information. 

For example:  This could include information about how to access health services, details about local and online social groups, information about rights, and other resources that might help someone on a range of topics.  We also publish articles on our ‘info portal’ to share the latest and most accurate information. 

When we believe another service might better meet someone’s needs, we provide information and contact details for people to contact them directly.  

For example:  Someone might ask us for support with their housing application.  As this isn’t an area we specialise in, we might signpost to housing support services we know to be inclusive and safe.  Someone else might come to us for counselling.  As we don’t currently offer counselling, we might be able to help someone find services who do.  We can also explore NHS and private options if necessary.  We understand that finding the right service can be challenging, and we are here to help you navigate your options.

We aim to work as closely as we can with partner agencies and try to know as much as possible about what they offer to ensure that any service we recommend is inclusive and supportive.  We also encourage feedback about other services to help us with this. 

If someone is having difficulty advocating for themselves, or isn’t getting the outcome they think they should, we can offer our support to discuss things on someone’s behalf.  

For example:  This might involve communicating with a GP, police officer, teachers etc.  Sometimes, providing emotional support might be necessary to help build the confidence needed for self-advocacy instead of advocating for someone (or as well as).  This would be determined collaboratively between the individual and their support worker. 

Support workers generally use a guided approach rather than providing direct advice, empowering people to discover their own solutions and making their own informed decisions.  

For example:  People seek guidance on a range of topics that relate to their (or someone else’s) gender or sexual identity.  We wouldn’t tell anyone exactly what to do, but instead seek to help someone weigh up the pros and cons to different options.  This could also include guidance on topics that don’t directly relate to gender or sexual identity, but where a person’s identity might be perceived to be impacting on them. 

Practical support often includes engaging in activities together, such as attending a social group with someone, or helping someone to go out.  It could also include supporting someone to submit forms.  This would usually form part of a broader support plan designed to help someone achieve their goals. 

For example:  Someone who might want to build social confidence could benefit from a support worker attending a support group for the first time.  This could help them feel more confident to speak to people, and to go back independently the next time.