Over the past twelve months, Space to Breathe have been delighted to be partnering with Voluntary Action Sheffield and 11 different Voluntary, Community & Social Enterprise organisations to work with individuals on the waiting list for mental health care in Sheffield.

The challenges and pressures on the NHS have been widely reported in the press. In August 2022, The Independent reported a study by Mind which found over 1.2 million people waiting for mental health support in the UK.

It therefore felt important and vital to join in with the effort to reduce the Waiting List in Sheffield where we can and to add the support of the Voluntary Sector to the incredible services provided by Sheffield Health and Social Care in the city.

Working directly with the brilliant team at Single Point of Access, this group of organisations have worked with 123 individuals, 34 of whom have worked directly with us at Space to Breathe. The project has also worked to support discharge from services and supported people pre-emptively before they might access GP or NHS services.

Space to Breathe has been working predominantly one to one with individuals teaching self-care, grounding and stress relief techniques like The Stop Process. We offer at least six sessions and look to help people’s emotional regulation and awareness.

This week we were delighted to receive statistics from this first year of work and discover that 80% of those we have worked with have reported an “improvement to the quality of their life.”

We were also so encouraged to hear some wonderful feedback from individuals we worked with.

“The service has been fantastic, Space to Breathe has thrown me a lifeline, I’ve been waiting for therapy from the NHS for years- stopped me from going off the rails"
"The tools Space to Breathe gave were life-changing. I was afraid to go outside or interact with people, but now I am able to go to shops and use the techniques Space to Breathe worked with me on if life gets difficult"
" I am now a completely different person, I can manage anxiety, paranoia has stopped, no more shouting and anger and moving away from PTSD"
"I never thought I could feel like this. It really feels like she has been given a second chance"

This is a wonderful testimony to the benefits of the voluntary sector to the world of NHS Mental Health care and we wanted to share this good news.

We also hope that in a small way, this project might become a blueprint for the other parts of NHS Mental Health care in the city and also for other regions and cities looking to address the waiting list in a creative way.

Working in a cost-effective way, playing to the strengths of the services each VCSE partner provides and working creatively and contextually with the people we have worked with, many have now not just received care similar to that they were waiting for, but also been discharged as a result of their improved mental health and wellbeing.

We look forward to continuing the project into the future and are delighted by these brilliant results.

If you want to know more about Space to Breathe’s work with NHS clients and it’s impact, you can watch this recorded 35min online seminar with the Association of Mental Health Providers which unpacks our work.

Watch it now