Welcome to Beacon Counselling

Beacon Counselling is a registered charity, and exists to improve the lives of people affected by mental or emotional distress. Set up in 1984, it provides a range of counselling and related services to adults, young people, and children. 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 17 million people in the UK struggle with each year.

To achieve its aims, Beacon provides counselling and related services to adults and young people and children in the borough of Stockport and beyond, with services for adults from 6 venues in Stockport, 3 in Wythenshawe; through services to young people from 12 secondary schools across Stockport and Macclesfield. and through Beacon 2, our service for young people outside of the school system. In 2010 a pilot of counselling and group work in 7 primary schools was highly successful. This service is continuing at a small scale in 2012 with plans to build on this in the future. In 2011, a stress management programme was piloted with parents attending Children’s Centres in Stockport. The pilot proved very effective and we are developing this further in 2012.

Beacon has grown by around 30% per year for the last three years, and during 2011 Beacon helped 750 adults and over 550 young people and children by delivering over 5000 counselling sessions through a team of 63 counsellors. This volume of work is matched by a dedication and commitment to quality; all counselling work is rigorously supervised by a team of casework supervisors working to the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s (BACP’s) Ethical Framework; counselling is monitored and evaluated to ensure that we understand the benefits and impact of our work.

From our monitoring and evaluation, we know that people benefit from our services through increases in confidence, self-esteem, and the ability to better 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 87 volunteers within Beacon, made up of counsellors (58) receptionists (12), admin (5), fundraising (1), and trustees (11). For our work in schools and Beacon 2, Beacon employs 7 counsellors. The whole team is supported by the manager and 5 office staff, with 12 casework supervisors providing clinical support and development for the counsellors.

Beacon is a dynamic and thoughtful organisation that is keen to respond to the needs of the community. As such, Beacon has developed several new services in the last year: new services to children in primary schools; extending the Beacon 2 project for young people outside of school; working with Disability Stockport to assist unemployed and disabled people in overcoming barriers to work; delivering a new group programme for adults experiencing stress. Each of these projects responds to a clear need identified from public research and internal monitoring, and each of these projects exemplifies Beacon’s commitment to working closely with other organisations, since almost all projects has a partnership with at least one other.

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, and is currently shortlisted for a Glaxo-Smithkline IMPACT Award for its record of delivering benefit and impact where it is needed most.

So in summary, Beacon Counselling is an effective and innovative charity with a track record of delivering high quality and innovative services that are evidence based, effective, and targeted at the greatest need.

Annual Report:

activity report 2011