Vision
To share learning and experience in running successful, sustainable, affordable counselling services through partnership working.
Our Centres
We currently have two counselling centres across Yorkshire: Wellspring at Shine, based out of St Stephen’s Church in Bradford and Wellspring at The Belfry, in central York. Both centres provide affordable counselling using volunteers, students and staff and their centre managers are supported by the Wellspring Team.
We would love to partner with more like-minded organisations, so if you are interested in finding out more please contact emily@wellspringtherapy.co.uk.
The Model
Wellspring Counselling Centres bring together Wellspring’s 20 years of experience in delivering affordable professional counselling services with a church or charity who is in touch with their community and ready to help. Through partnership working, we will support a church to set up, deliver and grow an affordable counselling service based on our own model.
The organisation is responsible for hiring and looking after staff and volunteers, and for providing a safe space for the counselling to run from, including providing safeguarding cover. The model works with a part-time Counselling Service Manager (CSM) being in post to oversee volunteer, student and staff counsellors. Wellspring provides and keeps up-to-date an Operations Manual, which covers the whole of service delivery, software for all data to be securely stored on, and support in recruitment. We meet regularly with the CSMs as well as provide other ad hoc support and training. Wellspring charges the organisation an annual fee for this support.
History
For many years, Wellspring has been approached by churches and charities asking for support in setting up counselling services or for advice in helping existing counselling organisations. Many churches and charities have a passion to see people suffering from emotional distress, receive hope and support through counselling, but feel they lack the confidence or resources to know how to offer this service.
The need for mental health support continued and continues to grow, with the NHS overwhelmed and private counselling still unaffordable for many. In 2018, after moving into our new building (Wellspring House), our CEO at the time, Emily Fullarton, felt it was right to formalise this support, having a better ‘package’ to offer these organisations when they approached us. Wellspring started to look into how this partnership work could look.
The Cinnamon Incubator
In 2023, we were delighted to receive a place on the The Cinnamon Incubator, which consisted of two years of advice and training around how to replicate an existing model of working. Cinnamon have supported many charities in a similar way, having experts on their team who have worked in franchising and through connecting people with other charities doing a similar thing. We already had our pilot partnership established with Shine, Bradford but the support from Cinnamon was invaluable in helping us create a thought through, safe, professional model. We were delighted for Shine to open their doors to clients in partnership with us in early summer 2023.
