Beacon Counselling

Beacon is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee, and exists to improve the lives of people experiencing emotional and mental health distress. This means people dealing with depression, bereavement, anxiety, stress, and relationship difficulties, to name just a few. Basically, these are the issues that most people will face at some point in their lives, and that millions of people in the UK struggle with.

To achieve its aims, Beacon provides counselling to adults and young people in the Stockport area and beyond, with services for adults from 4 venues in Stockport, 2 in Wythenshawe, and through services to young people from 10 schools in Stockport, Macclesfield, and Oldham districts, and through Beacon 2, our service for young people outside of the school system.

From our monitoring and evaluation, we know that people benefit from our services through increases in confidence, self-esteem, and the ability to cope in the future, and through a reduction in th... more

Beacon is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee, and exists to improve the lives of people experiencing emotional and mental health distress. This means people dealing with depression, bereavement, anxiety, stress, and relationship difficulties, to name just a few. Basically, these are the issues that most people will face at some point in their lives, and that millions of people in the UK struggle with.

To achieve its aims, Beacon provides counselling to adults and young people in the Stockport area and beyond, with services for adults from 4 venues in Stockport, 2 in Wythenshawe, and through services to young people from 10 schools in Stockport, Macclesfield, and Oldham districts, and through Beacon 2, our service for young people outside of the school system.

From our monitoring and evaluation, we know that people benefit from our services through increases in confidence, self-esteem, and the ability to cope in the future, and through a reduction in the symptoms that brought them to counselling in the first place. Further to this, around 95% of the people who provide feedback to us report a benefit from using Beacon?s services. This does not mean that counselling can solve all problems, but it does mean that anyone coming to Beacon for help with emotional and mental health issues is almost certain to be better as a result.

The foundation of Beacon?s service is its volunteers. There are 70 volunteers within Beacon, made up of counsellors (32) receptionists (18), admin (6), fundraising (3), and trustees (11). The voluntary team is supported by the manager and 4 part-time office staff, with 8 casework supervisors providing clinical support and development to the counsellors. For our work in schools, Beacon employs 5 counsellors to cover the 10 schools it currently works in.

Beacon is a dynamic and thoughtful organisation that is keen to respond to the needs of the community. As such, Beacon has several new projects currently in development: supporting parents in Wythenshawe; starting a new service from Adswood in Stockport; extending the Beacon 2 project for young people outside of school to new areas of Stockport; implementing a brand new Mental Health Promotion programme in 2009; targeting deprived areas with greater mental health problems; putting forwards an innovative proposal for reducing waiting times for psychological therapies across Stockport. Each of these projects responds to a clear need identified from public research, and each of these projects exemplifies Beacon?s commitment to working closely with other organisations, since each project has a partnership with at least one other.

Finally, Beacon was recognised in 2008 for its achievements and the high quality of its services through being awarded the Queen?s Award for Voluntary Service.