Latest News
Our fresh new look - designed in collaboration with young people
Wow, what a year it has been! The ongoing pandemic has created disruptions and difficulties for us all. We quickly moved all our counselling to telephone or zoom back in March last year.
Our staff and counsellors adapted quickly, and our take-up rate of sessions, to our relief, was an amazing 93% of attendance overall, with just a few young people choosing to wait until we can see them face to face. Our attendance rates have remained very high throughout demonstrating the very real need there is for our support.
Demand for our service is growing and we are currently now offering over 80 sessions a week (up from around 50 sessions a week before the pandemic). Of course, it’s a challenge to fund these extra counselling sessions but we believe we must. We’ve recruited new counsellors to help us meet the growing demand and are determined to be there for our local young people.
In preparation for our growth we have been super busy behind the scenes laying some strong foundations.
One of these is the development of our first organisational ‘Vision’ and ‘Mission’ supported by an important set of organisational ‘Values’.
Our mission is to provide the best possible mental health support to young people in St Albans and surrounding areas.
Our vision is that every young person can talk to someone who can help with whatever’s worrying them.
We have also developed a new ‘visual look’ for Youth Talk, which will help us to communicate more strongly and clearly with the people we need to reach. We hope you like it and are as excited about it as we are!
All of this work has been developed hand in hand with our new ‘Youth Panel’ of young people who have advised us, challenged us and helped us to shape it and make all the important decisions along the way.
Without a doubt we have a very challenging year ahead of us – one which will see a continued growth in demand for our services set against a backdrop of the toughest fundraising environment we have ever seen.
If you have any questions or would like to find out more about our new visual look or service please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Rachel, rachel.simkin@youthtalk.org.uk