Providing counselling and support to people who need it when they need it, Crisis was established in 1996 when its founder, Jean Cumming, saw an unanswered need for early intervention guidance services that were not being provided in Scotland.
Since that time Crisis has been meeting the needs of the community, acting as a quick access point that has met the needs of over 40,000 people.
This includes providing professional therapists for those with difficulties such as depression or anxiety, as well as increasing the provision of counselling services in Scotland by accommodating practical training for students intending to become counselling professionals.
Paul, a CBT counselling student working at Crisis got vital experience in working face to face with “such a varied mix of people with different presentations”.
An important part of their business is providing Employee Assistance Programmes to organisations such as West Coast Motors.
They provide vital support to employees from these organisations when dealing with difficulties, such as financial or emotional worries. They pay the income from the contracts directly into the centre’s overall running costs, enabling the service to continue on a day to day basis.
With an existing long-standing relationship, S&CC were delighted to help when Crisis decided a new building was needed in order to expand their service.
Funding was provided and the building started construction in 2016. Now complete, it is able to accommodate more counsellors and therefore deliver assistance to more clients.
Since the project Crisis has had its contracts renewed annually and has been able to invest in equipment and technology that allows them to help people in remote and rural areas, providing counselling via mediums such as Skype.
Jean credits S&CC’s support with being crucial in getting the building project off the ground. “They (S&CC) could understand the project from day one and got us the capital required, it was affordable and realistic, it stabilised things working towards the future…
The communication and relationship we have with Social & Community Capital is key to our development. Having them at the end of the phone… looking at what the options are and finding ways of business continuity, it’s been huge.”