Suicide counselling service under threat

3:12pm Friday 21st November 2008

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A vital counselling service which helps hundreds of suicidal people a year faces closure because it cannot find funding.

As You Are, based in Southwick, is a not-for-profit service which offers therapy to 90 clients each week from as little as £5 per session.

Many of those needing help are from the poorest estates in the area and are suicidal.

With 20 volunteer counsellors the service costs just £37,000 a year to run – yet it faces closure because its bosses have been refused funding from ten different sources in the past few weeks.

Service manager Nicky Hitchcock said: “Unlike other services, we do not specialise in one given area. We provide counselling for those who need it but can’t afford private therapy.

“It is this generic nature that could be our downfall, because it may be easier to find funding if we just dealt with drug addicts or women or one specific group.”

The organisation has held out a begging bowl to the Rayne Foundation, the Henry Smith Charity, West Sussex Primary Care Trust (PCT), the Big Lottery Fund, the Allen Lane Trust, Trusthouse, American Express, Sussex Community Foundation, West Sussex County Council and the Department of Health – all to no avail.

An application for £5,000 from Brighton and Hove City Council will be decided next month.

Tim Loughton, the MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, said: “The cost of failing these vulnerable people could be outstripped by the impact it will have on the clients if the service is forced to close. I have written to the PCT and other bodies to see if funding can be found before it is too late.”

As You Are volunteers say that unless cash is found the service will be forced to close at the end of January.

Dominic Ellett, the assistant director of mental health for West Sussex PCT said: “From next April we will be increasing our primary mental health provision. However, currently we do not fund services from As You Are and have no plans to extend our counselling services.”

A spokesman for West Sussex County Council said: “We look sympathetically at all groups that come to us for for funding, but we do have limited resources and our own commitments.”