The past year has again been a very eventful one for our organisation, building on our core services and developing new ones.
Following unfortunate tragic events we had many requests from organisations working with people with learning disabilities to deliver trauma and on-going bereavement counselling and support to their members and staff, which we successfully provided. These events gave birth to the research and development of a dedicated service for this client group funded by The King's Fund. With Carole at the helm, the service provision will soon be fully operational. Please refer to Carole's report.
There are many different languages and dialects in Brent. If we don't have a Volunteer Bereavement Visitor who speaks the client's language available, we offer clients the opportunity to have an interpreter during sessions. This service has been very well received, especially by refugees - people who have often suffered multiple losses - family, friends, home, country, language. However, this service is expensive for us to maintain without specific funds.
We have continued to make good progress in meeting the needs of bereaved people in Brent by introducing new ways of communication - our website is already informative, but changes and additions are constantly being made to improve it further. There is already an on-line referral system and e-mail facility and we hope to have information on our training courses and help-line numbers for other organisations on-line by the end of the year.
Training continues to be a prime directive for us. We consistently strive to expand and to improve our courses and workshops to meet the ever changing needs of our multicultural community. Please refer to Valerie's report.
In working with children and young people we aim to help them to appreciate that "good-byes" can be happy as well as sad. Therefore "End of Counselling Parties" successfully took place as closure to the counselling process this year. My thanks to all those who helped make these events memorable. This is a further development to our services for bereaved children. Following many enquiries from concerned parents and carers anxious about their bereaved children's behaviour, from early January 2002 a Parents and Carers Group will also be set up for the remaining parent or carer.
We are frequently called upon for old-fashioned advice and support. Often this is not monitored or evaluated as this service is given as a matter of course. In addition to the individual counselling figures stated, we have also provided 205 people with counselling at our weekly Drop In Centre and had 90 attendances at the Fortnightly Panda Group (self-help). Our Trauma Counselling Team (!) has also provided much appreciated support to over 50 people in Brent this year.
My thanks to all our hard working, enthusiastic and dedicated Volunteers, Staff (Valerie, Raksha and Carole), Supervisors (Jacqui, Rohini and Valerie) and our Management Committee Members.
PAULO PIMENTEL