The Listening Place, a charity based on Shepherd's Bush Road, is seeking to recruit more volunteers from the local area for its new centre in Hammersmith.

The award-winning organisation offers free, confidential and ongoing face-to-face listening, by appointment, to anyone aged 18 or over who feels that life is no longer worth living.

Its aim is to relieve the suffering of adults from suicidal feelings and it relies on trained volunteers to provide this vital confidential service.

Carefully trained and selected volunteers will get to work in a supportive environment, backed by experienced mental health professionals, and have regular meetings with ‘Visitors’ who are struggling with suicidal thoughts, plans and actions.

The Listening Place provides fortnightly sessions, based on active listening and befriending: building trust and a supportive relationship, usually for 3 month period. Its own impact measurement shows that this helps people with suicidal thoughts to openly discuss, examine and reflect on their situation with a warm and supportive Volunteer.

The Listening Place can currently support more than 4000 visitors per year and receives referrals at the rate of over 500 per month and that is increasing every month. Its referrals come from more than 130 partners including the NHS, charities, the Police and Social Services. Visitors are referred by many different parts of the NHS but particularly A&E Departments, mental health triage services, IAPT services and GP practices. The many charities who make referrals include Hestia, Maytree and British Red Cross.

People from all walks of life and any life circumstances can feel that life is no longer worth living. The people who we support come from a widely diverse range of backgrounds, experiences and ethnicities; many have been the victims of incredibly challenging situations.

Current volunteer Craig Morley says, “We need warm, empathetic and caring individuals who want to help others and have the time to offer ongoing, non-judgmental, face-to-face support.

“We support thousands of visitors every week and have about 500 volunteers, including at our new visitor site on Shepherd’s Bush Road at Hammersmith.”

If you visit the charity’s website you will find more information including a video for prospective volunteers.

 

Like Reading Articles Like This? Help Us Produce More This site remains committed to providing local community news and public interest journalism. Articles such as the one above are integral to what we do. We aim to feature as much as possible on local societies, charities based in the area, fundraising efforts by residents, community-based initiatives and even helping people find missing pets. We’ve always done that and won’t be changing, in fact we’d like to do more. However, the readership that these stories generates is often below that needed to cover the cost of producing them. Our financial resources are limited and the local media environment is intensely competitive so there is a constraint on what we can do. We are therefore asking our readers to consider offering financial support to these efforts. Any money given will help support community and public interest news and the expansion of our coverage in this area. A suggested monthly payment is £8 but we would be grateful for any amount for instance if you think this site offers the equivalent value of a subscription to a daily printed newspaper you may wish to consider £20 per month. If neither of these amounts is suitable for you then contact info@neighbournet.com and we can set up an alternative. All payments are made through a secure web site. One-off donations are also appreciated. Choose The Amount You Wish To Contribute. If you do support us in this way we’d be interested to hear what kind of articles you would like to see more of on the site – send your suggestions to the editor. For businesses we offer the chance to be a corporate sponsor of community content on the site. For £30 plus VAT per month you will be the designated sponsor of at least one article a month with your logo appearing if supplied. If there is a specific community group or initiative you’d like to support we can make sure your sponsorship is featured on related content for a one off payment of £50 plus VAT. All payments are made through a secure web site.

July 15, 2022