Livewire youth project runs a mental health and wellbeing project, whereby we support young people to reach their full potential and overcome many issues with their mental health and wellbeing. We seek to help the young people we work with to become resilient confident individuals and have found that our mental health project exceeded our expectations in terms of outcomes and has become integral to the delivery at Livewire. During these unprecedented times it has been necessary to adapt our provision and work in creative ways to continue to offer young people the support they need.
To that end currently Livewire is working online we have two support groups on Facebook one Livewire members support between the hours of 7 and 9 Monday and Thursday and on Wednesday evening 6 till 8 during which time we have youth workers available to talk to young people either in groups or one to one there is generally a zoom meeting for one hour where young people can offer each other support talk to youth workers and just chat about whatever we also have our mental health lead present and volunteer counsellors so whilst online instead of face to face we are still able to offer support to young people.
Tuesday evenings we have the other group which is Livewire wellbeing support group which runs from 6 till 8 and also has youth workers, mental health lead, counsellors and wellbeing volunteers. This session runs very much the same as the other sessions which also are closed groups for safety reasons. We also have a telephone support service whereby a youth worker is available on the phone between 10 and 12 three mornings a week and our mental health lead is available on the other 2 days, there is also a text phone whereby young people can send a text message and someone will get back to them they can ask for someone in particular or we can decide who would best to speak to them. Our counsellors also are working on the phone or on skype so we are still able to offer appointments and whilst we predictably weren’t overly busy during the Easter break since that has passed we are taking new referrals most days.
We are very concerned for the state of young people’s mental health once this is all behind us.
On behalf of Livewire Youth Project