Supported Steps CIC

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

Our primary aim is to help those struggling with mental ill-health to improve their health and emotional wellbeing. With this, we work with all types of individuals from a variety of religious, spiritual, and cultural backgrounds; with differing diagnoses, triggers, coping mechanisms, and support systems. All of whom will no doubt experience both improvements and periods of relapse during their recovery journey and time working with us. I am a certified ASSIST Mental Health First-Aider, and focus a great deal of effort on raising awareness of the signs and symptoms associated with deterioration in individual’s mental health, as well as sharing a range of appropriate knowledge and skills with our team and family members of service users, so that all those who form an individuals’ support system feel confident and well-equipped to support someone at risk of suicide.

What are your current priorities?

Our priorities at present are focused on supporting individuals and families in our local community to thrive and live more fulfilled lives, despite living with mental health difficulties. As a team, we are hugely passionate about reducing stigma and discrimination around mental health and promoting more awareness within our community. Social research is an important part of our work right now, as we strive to provide the support and service’s that our community is lacking. All of our service’s profits and donations go directly to providing our community with the necessary resources to improve mental health and wellbeing for those most in need.

Supported Steps is committed to providing the best quality person centered care for individuals experiencing mental ill-health. We aim to improve social outcomes and rebuild confidence in those who have experienced adversity due to lack of support and adequate social care which meets their individual needs.

Our service utilises the Recovery model of mental health in all aspects of our work, with all of our staff trained to provide a variety of evidence-based approaches, therapeutic interventions, crisis prevention support and self-care tools to service users to help improve mental health and wellbeing.

What challenges are you currently facing?

The current challenges we are facing as a service are mostly due to a lack of available funding to help those in need. Social care is something that is hugely underfunded as it is. However, with mental health support it would seem that low-level needs are not seen as a huge priority when it comes to the government’s budgets. And with this, the majority of our clients pay for our support privately with their direct payments. We actively seek and apply for government funding and grants, such as those provided through the national lottery, to help others in need without any costs to them. However, this sort of funding can be quite difficult to come by, which is incredibly sad considering the value of such support to those in need.