Listening Lounge Celebrates 2nd Birthday

The free mental health and wellbeing service is celebrating two years of helping islanders, having supported nearly 3,000 islanders with almost 10,000 appointments.

The Listening Lounge opened just before the pandemic began, with an aim to give people access to early help and support.

During those two years, it reported that depression, stress and anxiety have been the leading three mental health issues that islanders have suffered with.

Additionally, loneliness and isolation were also cited as concerns, due to the impact of Covid-19.

The free service for over 18s works in partnership with the Health and Community Services and the specialist mental health and wellbeing provider L.I.N.C (part of the LV Care Group).

It has received a 95% high satisfaction rating, with past clients saying they would recommend the service to others.

Lucy Nicolaou, head of LINC services for LV Care Group, says the service has been a much-needed resource during the pandemic: 

"It's been great and really wonderful to see people engage with the service. We knew that there was a need but we'd only been open for two or three months when Covid hit, so we had to change a lot of what we had planned to do and the way we intended to work with people, for example moving to online and introducing a helpline and making things accessible on appointment basis rather than drop-in.

"We know that it's still a very popular offer for people who are presented with problems like depression, stress and anxiety  - which is what we would anticipate as they are the most common mental health problems, and it really shows that we are encouraging people to come and see us early on which is also what we really want to do to prevent problems escalating."

The service offers two types of services for islanders:

"We are open from 10am to 10pm seven days a week, and everything we offer can be accessed on a self-referral basis, so there's no need to get a GP or a referral from another healthcare provider, people can just pick up the phone or send us an email and come on by.

"We have two main offers, and it's really the persons choice whether they access a combination of both or just one of the services. Our staff team are made up of peer workers, they are people who have experience of mental illness or poor mental health and recovery, and they work alongside our professional team of counsellors, and they both support people in different ways. 

"With our peer support we are usually able to offer an appointment within a day or two, so it's really accessible and it just offers a safe space to come on by and have a conversation about any concerns or worries that might be affecting someone's wellbeing, and then we can start to think about a plan to how best support somebody.

"With the counselling service, it's about a two week wait for a first appointment and then somebody will come on by and have an initial assessment with one of our counselling team and thereafter we can decide what type of support is going to be helpful - whether that's with us or whether we can work with one of our partner agencies if more specialist support is needed."

Further appointments on weekends and evenings have been made available, with five new members being recently recruited to the team. 

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