STaR (Support, Time and Recovery)
STaR Service, Health in Mind offers support to people experiencing mild to moderate mental health problems. The STaR service offers practical support for issues such as employment, further education, benefits, housing, money worries, family problems and social life. It also offers specific help for older persons.
We are a short-term service and hope by the end of our time with you, you will have received some support with a range of issues including:
- Employment and job seeking
- Social isolation and loneliness
- Debt Problems
- Budgeting
- Housing
- Parenting related issues
- Agoraphobia – Exposure Therapy
- i.e. shyness, low confidence, anxiety in a range of situations
We will meet you at a venue as near to your home as possible and in some cases we can visit you in your home. A STaR worker will help you identify practical issues which are having an effect on your happiness and mental wellbeing. During this chat we will look at ways forward and depending upon the types of issues you have we will do a number of things including:
A STaR worker will help you identify practical issues which are having an effect on your happiness and mental wellbeing.
- Ensure clear communication as well as trusting and respectful working relationships with you.
- We can research into groups and activities in the area which you could be a part of.
- Look at training opportunities available to you.
- We can also give moral support by attending tribunals, meetings with solicitors, banks, first occasions to groups and clubs or anywhere you feel you would like moral support.
- Introduce you to new experiences such as cycling, yoga, and assertiveness training.
- Signposting to organisation you can offer more specialist support or advice for your presenting issues.
- With your permission we can refer you to specialist organisations.
We may go and research activities, groups and organisations which you may like to get involved in. We can suggest ideas depending on the information you have told us about yourselves. We can offer information such as:
- Employment support available to you in your area
- Volunteer services
- Training services
- Education service
We talk to a number of organisations and resources within Colchester and Tendering area, and where possible, we will introduce you to a person who can offer you longer or more specific support. We believe that once we know a face communication comes a lot easier!
The first step is quite often the scariest step, and this is where we can offer our moral support to help you.
We all at some stage in our lives need someone to cast a light on our problems, sometimes our problems are too emotive to sort out by ourselves, or we cannot see or find a solution. Our STaR Team can help to focus on ways forward and look at who best can help with finding solutions to problems. We can support you with visiting CAB, linking you up with the Colchester Volunteer Service; we can tweak out what sparks your imagination, what interests you, and what you may need to do in order to raise your motivation and enthusiasm for life. We can remind you that action breeds motivation and that it is not possible to be motivated without actually doing something! The first step is quite often the scariest step, and this is where we can offer our moral support to help you take that leap of faith into the unknown.
Things that can add to our happiness:
- Meeting new and like minded people.
- Having a sense of belonging to a group or organisation.
- Being accepted within a group.
- Having a sense of purpose and structure to our days.
- Trying new things and expanding our comfort zones to accommodate for things that excite us, make us laugh and fill us with confidence.
- Raising self esteem by valuing who we are, often through feedback and being a part of a group or by achieving something that initially made us feel scared.
- Giving our time and being compassionate.
- Realising that each of us has something important to offer.
Each one of us will have our own dreams, goals and wants for happiness. A STaR worker can work alongside you to help weed out what it is that can really touch your lives and bring more happiness. The only thing we ask is that you take personal responsibility to make positive things happen in your lives, after all we are the only ones who can ever make changes in our own lives, and it’s true, we do reap what we sow, no matter how old we are!
Contact Details
Team Leader
Sue Sullivan
Administrator
Bryony Street
Contact Us
For further information phone 01206 217450 or email enquiries@colchestermind.org or write to 7 Oxford Road, Colchester, Essex. CO3 3HN.
