Let’s Keep Talking is telephone support service set up and run by a Clinical Psychologist at the start of the first Covid 19 lockdown (late March 2020) to provide free, confidential, self-referred phone conversations with fully-trained solution-focused therapists and counsellors.

We have a small but passionate and dedicated team of people, (mainly from Merseyside (but also from Edinburgh, Norfolk, London, Herefordshire, Canada and Albania!) .. who have given up their time to use their solution-focused talking skills to help anyone who wants to talk. Together we have supported almost 600 people, with more than 8,000 phone calls, over the past 5 years.

We know that there are many therapy and counselling services, but we believe that Let's Keep Talking does things differently, in a number of ways, and these differences are probably why more than 80 per cent of the people using our service rate it as "extremely useful", and say that it provides support that they simply couldn't get elsewhere. This is borne out by the number of people referred or signposted to us by organisations such as like Citizens Advice, and from NHS services like GP surgeries, Social Prescribers, primary care talking therapy providers and even mental health inpatient services, who have found our service an invaluable addition to the work they do to help people. 

What is different in how we deliver our service is that we give our clients control over the length, number and frequency of the calls they have and that we offer continuity by enabling clients to speak to the same person all the time, if they want to. Our solution-focused approach, which helps people to talk about their own ideas on how they want their life to be, and to notice their own strengths and resources, also sets us apart from talking services that focus solely on people’s problems and supposed deficits. 

Having successfully delivered this service on a voluntary basis for the past 5 years, with some support from generous individuals, and a few short-term grants, we are now strugging to make ends meet and may have to close the service if we cannot raise some funds in the next few months.

Please help if you can, or pass on to others who you think may be able to. 

Thank you! 

Suzi

Clinical Psychologist and Director, Let's Keep Talking