As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, Emma Hardy, MP for Hull West and Hessle, visited our new premises on Nelson Street. The visit provided a great opportunity to update Emma about our exciting plans to expand our provision of NHS Talking Therapies services to the local community.
Here’s what Emma had to say about the visit:
“As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, I was pleased to meet with Focus Counselling to see the premises for their new head offices in the Fruit Market. They plan to develop a vacant old building into a counselling hub for NHS patients and a training institute to help people gain qualifications to work in psychotherapy. This will be an amazing resource for the area – look forward to visiting them when they are all up and running.”
The number of people accessing talking therapies nationally for conditions such as anxiety and depression through the NHS increased by 21.5% since 2020.* Our new premises will provide increased capacity to meet this growing demand, helping more local people access the support they need.
Our Clinical Director, Peter Palumbo says:
“This project will form three parts. Firstly, an expanded space for our head office, as delivering in Hull is at the centre of what we do. Secondly, facilities for us to develop our therapist training activities. We have a proven track record in training local people for opportunities in our sectors of care, employing many of our own graduates. Finally, this facility will create much needed face-to-face clinical space to expand our public facing NHS activities. We aim to meet the ever increasing demand for NHS care by providing purpose built clinical space for the community.”
We’ll be posting further updates as work progresses, so watch this space!
*Source: Psychological Therapies, Annual report on the use of IAPT services, 2021-22 – NHS Digital