Funding from Garfield Weston will go towards support for our main therapeutic project – Talk Together - with £25k in funding awarded towards complex youth mental health and trauma recovery support.

Since March 2020 we have seen a rise in referrals and continued to offer bespoke therapeutic services across a range of needs - early help right through to intensive and complex support. We recorded that over 90% of service users have experienced shock/developmental trauma, and with the pandemic exacerbating pre-existing issues and causing new difficulties to emerge, our rise in referrals looks set to continue.

The pandemic has caused a significant rise in demand for our services; we are currently receiving over 40 referrals per week, compared with an average of 19 per week in 2019.

In addition to a rise in referrals we have found that more and more the children and young people we meet are presenting with complex issues, including: self-harming behaviours, suicidal ideation, disordered eating and severe anxiety.

Complex work is currently a great area of need. Support work is more intensive and requires a longer-term approach to achieve positive, lasting outcomes. Without timely support, issues risk escalating.

We are so grateful to all our funders and welcome this support from Garfield Weston for an area of growing concern during the pandemic, and now ion the recovery phase too.