Hector’s House

How does your organisation contribute to preventing suicide and supporting those affected by it?

At Hector’s House, our ultimate goals are:

To save life by ensuring young people receive education about mental health and suicide prevention, thus enabling society to be informed, pre-warned and armed with life skills which can be passed to future generations.

To ensure when any type of sudden death occurs, the best care, support and information is provided to the family and friends affected, via an approved and monitored process which includes all partner agencies providing services.

To give financial support to other suicide prevention and mental health charities who provide 24/7 phone lines for people in crisis.
To fund counselling via approved professionals to any person in crisis who requires professional intervention immediately and does not have their own funds in order to pay.

What are your current priorities?

We plan to:

– Establish a working model for the charity which will enable all short term (2-5 year) goals to be carried out.

– Secure core funds in order to sustain the working model for the next 3 years

– Develop a strategy designed to grow the profile of the charity throughout Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire in order to establish the name ‘Hector’s House’ to the point of being ‘the service provider of choice’ for – all individuals, local authorities, health professionals, partners and voluntary sector colleagues in relation to sudden death, suicide and good mental health education.

– Work in partnership with the Hertfordshire Child and Adult Mental Health Services (CAMHS) transformation team in order to develop requirements for a Support Service to be available to those affected by a sudden death in Hertfordshire. Service to be delivered by Hector’s House.

– Develop our fundraising strategy in order to fully explore and utilise an established process which enables us to raise funds via a cocktail of methods; including grant giving, commissioning, gifting and funds raised by our own volunteers and employees.

– Continue to fund the RSPH Youth Health Champion program in schools.

– Continue to provide funds to other charities to fund phone lines.

– Continue to provide funds for emergency counselling as required.

What challenges are you currently facing?

We are a new charity and are currently only receiving funds via our own activities. This limits the number of courses we provide in schools.  We are currently close to completing a full business plan and model and expect to receive sustainability funds, specific funds and commissioned projects within the next 6 months.