Our organisational member In Charley鈥檚 Memory hopes to triple the number of young people it can support after securing 拢389,000 in Lottery funding.

The grant will help the Somerset-based service expand from four counselling rooms to 12 to try to help meet local demand.

It means that will go from helping 120 young people a week to more than 300.

Absolutely delighted

Our member Tammy Webb-Gardner, counselling services manager at In Charley鈥檚 Memory, said: 鈥淭he grant is two years of hard work and we鈥檙e absolutely delighted.

鈥淭he money means everything to us. It means we can open eight more rooms, which means we can triple the amount of young people we can see.

鈥淐ovid has had such an impact on young people and we鈥檙e seeing more and more.

鈥淲e鈥檙e seeing more than 120 people a week at the moment. It鈥檚 definitely escalating because of the pandemic but it was escalating anyway.

鈥淲e hope the Lottery money will help us to meet the demand 鈥� but we鈥檝e found that the demand is constantly growing.鈥�

In Charley鈥檚 Memory was set up by Jo Clements after her 18-year-old son Charley Marks took his own life in 2014.

Counselling

Based in Highbridge in Somerset, it supports young people aged 11 to 25 with one-to-one counselling.

Dawn Carey, the charity鈥檚 operations manager, said: 鈥淲e also do a lot of work in secondary schools and do a lot of assemblies.

鈥淲e talk about mental health, suicide, self-harm, but we also give coping techniques.

鈥淲e run drop-ins at the secondary school, which is a fantastic way for young people to talk to someone about what counselling is and what it would mean for them.

鈥淪ometimes it highlights the young people don鈥檛 need counselling, they just someone to listen to them.

鈥淲e鈥檙e passionate about early intervention, getting to the young people before they get to crisis.鈥�

Photo credit: In Charley's Memory