THE LOWDOWN

What follows is a report from The Lowdown charity on a grant made by the Thomas Brington Foundation.

Grant Amount: £6,750

• “From the funding awarded by The Thomas Brington Foundation we were able to complete our organisational aim of providing a free, non-judgemental, caring environment to support 19-25 year olds on their journey towards positive emotional health and wellbeing via our counselling service. 

• With the funding allocated the lowdown provided 150 counselling sessions to 54 individual 19-25 year olds from Northamptonshire on various issues including anxiety, self-esteem, anger, family problems, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. These issues haven’t changed but they have been exacerbated by the pandemic. The average referral to treatment time for these service users was 8 weeks with the average number of sessions provided to each individual being 7 sessions. Of these 54 young people 83% reported a positive Core Score (our measure for Mental Health assessment). 

• Our key learnings from the last year are that the demand for our services is growing. We know this as we had a 55% increase in referrals from the previous year and we envisage the numbers to increase again next year. To meet this demand, the lowdown needs to increase its capacity to provide more sessions and expand our services. With this increase in capacity the infrastructure of staff and resources also needs to grow too. We have already expanded our staff team to meet these needs and to ensure the wellbeing of our staff. We have also started an extension in our rear garden to be able to provide more sessions and host our Wellbeing Cafe in a larger, more suitable space for young people.“

Below is a case study from one of the young people supported during the funding period: 

Core Score -= 28 at the first assessment. This reduced to 12 at close of case

The client grew up as an only child, living alone with their mother who they described as being unpredictable and emotionally abusive throughout their childhood. 

They described struggling with their emotions, feeling that they were controlled by how they perceived others as feeling.   Their experiences in childhood also continued to impact the client through feelings of constant anxiety, and continued trust issues in relationships, as well as feelings of loneliness.  The client felt fear that they were not where they wanted/expected to be, at their age and felt a strong sense of ‘stuckness’ to moving forward. 

The client’s initial goals were to navigate why they felt so stuck as well as be able to stop putting so much pressure on themself. 

The counsellor worked with a person-centered approach, using empathic and a non-judgmental responses, enabling the client the safety to talk through what was going on for her and build a trusting relationship and explore their difficulties.

Due to their experiences growing up, having inconsistent boundaries and responses from their mother, as well as having had to learn, from a very early age how to navigate ‘how to be’, depending on how they perceived their mother’s mood, to stay safe! This showed that the client had developed an external locus of evaluation, leading to her ignoring her own needs to avoid conflict with others. 

Through exploring they were able to realise that they had a tendency to stay in relationships or jobs that were familiar and predictable even if these were no longer healthy or, gave them feelings of purpose or achievement.   Their relationships felt unbalanced, with the client giving their all and struggling to accept that they didn’t receive the same level of effort from their spouses or friends, leading to feelings of upset of anger.  We used the ‘Karpman drama triangle’ as a way of understanding how we changed roles from rescuer, victim to persecutor, to enable awareness of this cycle. 

Through self-awareness, the client was also able to start to practice noticing when they were making choices externally, to then enable them to re-evaluate their choices and reflect on their own internal needs and preferences to start to break their old unneeded patterns they had developed as a child. 

At the end of the sessions the counsellor signposted the client to 19-25 drop in at the Lowdown to continue to have a safe place to offload as this is something that she felt helped reduce her levels of stress.  It would also give her opportunities for peer support as she had a limited network of support in her personal life.

RE:Store Northampton Visit

On 18th February 2022, Natalie and Eddie were able to attend their first charity visit ensuring that all COVID-19 guidelines at the time were followed. They visited Re:Store Northampton who the Thomas Brington Foundation has approved a grant to for the previous 2 years. 

On arrival they were met by Anya who is the Charity Director. She took them through to the Hub cafe which has a modern, coffee shop feel to it. This is a multi purpose area where service users are able to get a hot or cold drink and a snack, socialise with other service users, speak with one of Re:Stores trained volunteer befrienders, wait for their food parcels to be made up, or visit with the Support Worker who has a private area within the Hub. 

The private area within the Hub is used by Re:Stores trained Support Worker or other agencies such as Citizens Advice. The Support Worker is able to support service users with varying physical/mental health needs or social deprivation to engage in meaningful activities to promote confidence, self esteem and motivation. 

They then went downstairs to the food bank and Grobaby area. They were shown the Grobaby ‘shop’ where parents are able to choose clothing, toys and other items they may need for their child. The shop was well presented and a,, of the items on offer were excellent quality. 

After this they were introduced to Helen, the Food Bank Project Coordinator who has been funded using the Thomas Brington Grant since 2020. Helen talked us through how the food bank works from how they get their donations, the ‘pick lists’ given to service users to place their ‘order’ for their food parcel and the additional parcels they can provide such as their ‘essentials bag’ which is offered to  food parcel recipients which contain food cupboard essentials such as cooking oil, herbs and spices. The food which they offer is excellent quality and the use of a ‘pick list’ ensures the service users are empowered with a degree of choice.

It was clear during the visit that service users are treated with dignity and respect throughout their time with Re:Store and that the support is still offered even after they have used their 6 food parcel allowances for the year through their continued use of the Hub, the volunteer befrienders and the Support Worker. 

We are pleased to be able to offer a grant to them this year to fund their Support Worker and Food Bank Project Coordinator who are both integral to the Service Re:Store Northampton is able to offer.