Tor Support Services provides free, confidential counselling and psychotherapy services for 5 – 25-year-olds who live in and around Okehampton in Devon. The charity has been offering this service since 2009. Clients are local children and young people who are referred to Tor Support Services with a wide range of issues including anxiety and depression, bereavement or parental separation, behavioural problems, substance abuse and self-harm. Some are also suffering from abuse or neglect. Increasingly Tor Support Services are seeing young people who are coping with gender dysphoria and more who are suffering with suicidal ideation. Added to this are those whose lives have been impacted by the consequences of the Covid pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis.
A grant of £3500 is supporting the ongoing costs and will specifically fund 70 counselling sessions for children and young people who are struggling to cope.