GP Consortium Endorses Life Changes
For the last two years Life Changes has provided a bespoke counselling service for the patients of the Eastleigh Southern Practices GP consortium. The sad news is that the funding for this project has now run out but Life Changes can take pride in the fact that we have provided a service that met, indeed exceeded, the hopes of the commissioning GP’s.
Dr Neeraj Sonpal lead GP of the consortium gave the following endorsement.
“ESP PCN have employed Life Changes Counselling for two years to provide a more bespoke therapy service to our patients for a wide range of mild to moderate mental health problems. We had found that the more generic NHS service did not always manage to ascertain the true cause of the problem. The feedback from patients and clinicians has been fantastic. We would not hesitate to use their services again should our funding stream allow.”
It is encouraging that the folk at the coalface of NHS appreciate our work so much, and whilst with the current financial position all bets are off about further contracts, LCC now has an established track record on which to build for the future.
This year has seen a significant degree of consolidation as we continue to put LCC on a more sustainable footing in the post covid era. This will also be my first AGM as Chairman and I would like to thank the work and effort Philip Meakins has put in over the years to getting the organization to where it is now!
During the last 12 months we have been effectively been providing three services, our core service, supported by our team of 24 volunteer counsellors, the grant funded paid counsellor project (PCP), employing 8 counsellors that have qualified and migrated from the core service, and lastly, the ESP Network project, that uses a number of experienced paid counsellors, majority of which have worked with LCC for some time...
Life Changes is pleased to announce we have obtained a Lottery Grant and can once more fund a limited number of financially challenged clients who cannot afford our current minimum fee, as well as continuing our work with Domestic Abuse victims (who frequently fall into the same category).
You are invited to attend LCC’s AGM on the revised date, Monday 8th January at 1900 hrs. on Zoom. We promise to pass rapidly through the boring bits and concentrate on giving all who have a stake in the organisation the opportunity to tell us how we are getting on from your point of view.
Do you have any ideas how we can improve our service to our clients and /or our trainees. Are there any opportunities for the future you can inform us of. Or would you just like to meet the people who run the organisation in the (virtual) flesh? Maybe you would like to pick our brains about where we are going in the future? Perhaps best of all, would you like to join us in helping run the organisation?
Whatever your position or point of view , we would certainly like to see you so drop Liz Rose an e mail at coordinator@lifechangescounselling.org.uk and we will send you a Zoom link for the meeting.
In the meantime, may I wish you all the best for the festive season and a happy 2024.
Philip Meakins
Chairman
22/23 Chairman's Report
LCC is pleased to announce that our Paid Counsellor Project (HiWCF) has successfully entered its second year on target. We currently have 6 of our alumni (counsellors who have worked with us and subsequently qualified) working on this project and by the end of next year, this is planned to be up to 8. Not only does this extra workforce help us keep our times from referral to treatment nicely low, the additional expertise and experience they represent is helping our ambition to constantly improve the service we offer to our clients.
On a separate issue, our venture into providing a service to the NHS has now also been running for a year. The PCN (GP consortium) for whom we provide the service is very pleased with it and has extended the contract for another year. Well done to all involved for making such a success of this venture.
Annual Report 21/22 and Financial Update Nov 2023
Life Changes Counselling has provided low-cost counselling in the Southampton area for 17 years. We charge according to ability to pay and until recently have been able to run the organisation with clients paying between £0 and £30. Our target for seeing clients is 6 weeks from referral (currently significantly less than this).
Since the summer the number of clients unable to pay anything at all has overwhelmed our business model and we have begun to run through our reserves in an unsustainable way. In August the trustees, with deep misgivings, decided that in order to balance the books we would temporarily stop taking new clients unless they were able to pay £35 a session, reducing it to a minimum of £15 if there was significant financial stress. Grant applications were made to fund those who were unable to afford these revised fees. To put these fees into perspective private counselling costs £50 and upwards, whilst NHS and large charities cost out at £100 to £150 a session.
Ed's amazing achievement in the Great South Run - October 2022
The Trustees of Life Changes Counselling invite you to the Annual General Meeting to review the year April 2021-March 2022 and onwards.
It will now take place on Sunday 27th November @ 7.00pm on Zoom
After the formal business of the meeting, we would like to turn this into your opportunity to contribute your ideas as to how we can
continue to improve our organisation.
To allow us to plan, please RSVP to: coordinator@lifechangescounselling.org.uk
Our routine financial audit over the last 3 months has revealed that the average donation being received has reduced significantly below that required to continue to fund the work of the Charity. We will continue to see existing counselling clients however the trustees have decided in order to enable the charity to maintain its counselling offering to the community, for the next 3 months we will set a minimum of £20 - £30 per session for new clients who are in financial stress and set a revised payment of £30 - £35 per session for those who are not. The trustees are acutely aware (and very uncomfortable) that there will be some clients who will be financially impacted by this decision and consequently be excluded from our service; the coming winter may well exacerbate this further. As a result, we are currently actively in the process of applying for grants in order to revert to our Charities mission of offering affordable counselling to everyone in the community. We are also looking at ways to increase throughput and thus achieve economies of scale. In the medium term we have plans for new income streams which will also help us return to a consistent and sustainable financial level offering counselling to all. We would like to emphasise this is not a decision we have taken lightly. To put this into context similar services provided by the NHS are charged to the taxpayer at up to 10 times this amount - and may have waiting times of a year or more. We plan to be back to normal in a far smaller time scale.
