Team-up with mental health foundation sees patients offered free counselling

A mental health foundation has teamed up with GP practices in part of Swansea to help provide wellbeing support to people close to their homes.

City Health Local Cluster Collaborative (LCC) is working with the Jac Lewis Foundation to offer patients one-to-one counselling and various workshops to improve their wellbeing.

Patients registered with a GP practice within the LCC can access the support for free.

Pictured: City Health LCC’s lead GP Dr David Howell, cluster lead for City Health LCC Rhys Jenkins and the Jac Lewis Foundation’s Director of Services Liz Thomas-Evans.

The LCC has provided funding for the foundation to provide support to patients until April next year.

The project will be delivered by the foundation’s team of therapists, with patients able to self-refer, as well as being referred by their GP.

City Health LCC includes Brunswick Health Centre, Abertawe Medical Partnership and High Street Surgery, Greenhill Medical Centre and Clase Surgery, Kingsway Surgery, Mountain View Health Centre, Nicholl Street Surgery, SA1 Medical Centre and St David's Surgery and Harbourside Medical Centre.

Rhys Jenkins, City Health LCC lead, said: “We wanted to be able to offer one-to-one counselling as a cluster as we found that group counselling wasn’t always suited to some of our patients.

“GPs can refer patients into the service and patients are also encouraged to refer themselves too.

“The foundation will then triage patients to understand which type of support would be beneficial to them.”

The Jac Lewis Foundation was set up in 2019 following the sudden death of the 27-year-old from Ammanford, with its aim providing easy access to professional counselling in the community for any age and issue.

Its Wellbeing Centre is based in Ammanford, with another hub since set up in St Helen’s Road in Swansea, close to several of the LCC’s GP practices.

The foundation also has a weekly mental health hub based at the Swansea.com Stadium every Friday between 10am and 3pm, which is accessible to everyone across Swansea Bay.

People can walk in and access support and advice from a variety of organisations and agencies.

Liz Thomas-Evans, Director of Services at the Jac Lewis Foundation, said: “The prevention of suicide is our main aim but one of our most important values is for people to be able to access support without barriers.

“We want to help support the NHS as much as possible, to be able to deliver easily accessible services.

“We know there can be long waiting times for patients so we want to be able to add value and try and help the GPs so they have somewhere they can refer patients to easily.

“We want to make our support as easily accessible for people as possible.”

As part of the project, patients can receive up to six one-to-one counselling sessions with a therapist.

It can range from cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), bereavement counselling and also eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR).

The service will also offer a variety of wellbeing workshops for patients, covering topics such as stress management, coping skills and mindfulness.

“They have tailored some workshops for our City Health patients,” Rhys added.

“There will be workshops focused on pain management, anxiety and also sleep hygiene to help people improve the quality of their sleep.

“The foundation will also provide music therapy and art psychotherapy for patients who would prefer that too."

The support offered to patients can be offered face-to-face, online or over the phone.

Once a referral is made by a GP, the patient is then contacted by one of the foundation’s counsellors to arrange an appointment.

The support offered to patients registered with a GP practice within City Health LCC will be delivered at the St Helen’s Road hub in the city centre, unless online or telephone support is preferred.

Liz said: “We have 10 counselling rooms there, as well as a training room, so we will be seeing patients out of there.

“It is really valuable for us to be included in the work of the cluster because we already know the community really well.

“We want to help prevent mental health conditions deteriorating over time without that early intervention.

“People can also access our mental health hub at the Swansea.com Stadium on a Friday with 23 services available to offer support and advice.”