Information for referrers

In these unprecedented times, we know that Coronavirus is a concern for everyone as it affects all of us, from our lives at home, at work and our friends and families. We want to let you know what EACH is doing to help combat the spread of the virus to support the health and wellbeing of service users and our staff in the services and communities that we work in.

We are closely monitoring and following Government and Public Health Advice to ensure we are doing our part to keep our staff and our communities safe during these challenging times.

Access to our service

We are still open. However, our services are now being delivered remotely, with all our staff (with the odd exception) working from home. As such, you can still refer to our services where clients meet the criteria and are willing to engage with us via remote working tools, such as phone, skype, video conferencing. We will need as much information from you as possible to manage risk and ensure client safety.

We would prefer referrals via email to info@eachcounselling.org.uk unless informed otherwise by the project staff as different services have their own email addresses for referrals.

If the above is not feasible, you can call as follows Mondays to Fridays:

Brent service: 0208 961 8623

Ealing service: 020 8579 4529

We will be taking calls 10am to 4pm, messaging service outside of these hours. Please bear with us if you do not get through due to limited staff availability – however, if you leave a message, this will be picked up and responded to within 48 hours.

What you can expect from us at this time

We are continuing to provide a service and support as much as we can; however, we are having to take into account the health needs of our staff and we also want to ensure that we are working within the Government guidelines at this time. We are not withdrawing services but looking at providing these in a different way. As such, we are:

Changing how we deliver a service to clients – for example changing from face to face to phone contact. This will mean that our contact with you will also primarily be over the phone (calls, texts, WhatsApp etc) to minimise risk to all.

Suspending some activities – this may be done based on risk or needing to re-deploy staff to the highest priority areas of our work. At this time, we are not providing group based activities or group support face to face. However, we are exploring how groups can be held through video conferencing and we ask you to bear with us whilst we sort this out.

Locations – we are not able to support clients at this time in physical locations, so will not be able to accompany clients to appointments or provide drop-ins.

Community support – we are building up an information bank of local community initiatives that are providing practical help to local residents, and will use this to help support our clients in lieu of some of the support we provide

Communication – we will keep you updated on nay developments that impact on our services and work with you to look at how we can utilise our resources effectively to support the wider community at this time

What we can expect from you

For us to support current and potential referrals effectively, we ask that you provide us with up to date information on client details, in particular in relation to risk. If we assess a client to be unsuitable for remote working support, we will inform you and work with you to look at possible alternatives if feasible.

Please ensure that we have the correct contact details for you and that we are informed of any changes relevant to continuing care for a client.

Moving forward

We will continue to proactively monitor, evaluate and respond to the impact of this changing situation, and we will update you on any changes we are making.

We would like to thank you for your support with the changes that we are making and asking of you too.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during these challenging times.