Hi everyone,
Thanks for reading our story. We are a small group of counsellors in Herne Bay who are dedicated in providing low cost counselling to the families in our community. As the project manager (Tanya), my own hero is my dear friend Tracey, who headed up the Charity Herne Bay Counselling Service for over 10 years, which has sadly shut down due to ill health. Tracey was my teacher, mentor, coach, friend and inspiration to take up the baton and start a new service in the local area.
My dream is to create a low cost charity service for Children and Young Adults (5 to 25years) I remember when I was training as a counsellor thinking that all counsellors should be working with children that we need to help children be the full stops to family patterns of hurt, abuse and trauma in all it's guises.
I currently work in a school where I often hear from parents that private counselling is too expensive, or there are long waiting lists, or the alternative is to put children on medication. If I had that one person who listened to me when I went through a horrendous transition in my own life I might not have made so many mistakes growing up. I am here now and I have felt the power of having that one person to witness and listen to my life story. Now I want to build a team of witnesses to support other children, so that we can build a healthier world than the one we are living in at the moment. Our strap line for this community service is 'Fostering Wisdom; Safeguarding our Futures', every child has their own wisdom, they just need that someone to believe in them and help them access it.
Here are some words from these children of our future who have been witnessed:
14 year 'I have tagged this room in my memory as it is my safe space that I can come back to when I feel overwhelmed'
16 year 'Thanks for helping me to find me again'
24 year 'You have helped me to grow and you believed in me, thank you'
18 year 'I feel I can breathe again'
I was the one trainee out of nine in my group who said that they could not work with children, nobody else was going down that route. It shocked and saddened but has not deterred me, in fact it has only built up my motivation even more which is why I am reaching out to you all for financial support. Here are some examples of where your money can be used for:
We need help with marketing:
Leaflets £100.00 Banner £200.00 Table Tents £50.00
We need help with administration costs:
Laptop computer £1,000
Shredder £60.00 (GDPR)
We need help with Children's resources:
Outreach programmes- £200.00
Your money could also sponsor families in the community for example:
One low income family could receive 9 weeks of Children's Counselling worth £360.00 for a child.
One low income family could receive 9 weeks of family counselling worth £450.00
Your money could sponsor further training for one counsellor
Family Therapist Training £7000
Person Centre Art Therapy £1500
Moving Forwards
I have a team of dedicated individuals who are going to run this with me, Nicky, Nicci, Hannah, Teresa, Deb and currently we are applying for charity status. At the moment we have one room to grow this but our dream is not going to stop there, we are looking for a bigger space, to have a least three rooms, one big enough so that we can turn it into a play therapy room. I am looking to have a team of counsellors within the service who are dedicated to supporting children and young adults. As you can appreciate, to run a low cost service is not easy financially which is why we are reaching out to you all to ask for some help. Thanks in advance for reading this and for supporting us in any which way you can.
Fostering Wisdom; Safeguarding our children's future.
Lots of Love
Tanya, Nicky, Teresa, Deb, Nicci and Hannah xxx
Caring 4 Young Minds