Making young people feel safe
Over the past 25 years we have developed and delivered services that are community based, trauma informed and needs led. Our counselling services enable children and young people to feel accepted and comfortable sharing their emotional needs and concerns and giving honest feedback. We want to raise expectations, fulfil potential and develop a confident and socially inclusive community through active engagement with our clients.
A safe space to speak
Area 43 services are underpinned by a person-centred ethos, collaborating with young people, the community, and other service providers to develop a service that places safeguarding and wellbeing at the heart of its provision.
Counselling services have always been at the heart of all our service delivery, preventing young people from escalating into crisis services, and our team of highly trained, specialist counsellors and clinical supervisors ensure that young people in our delivery areas have access to confidential, free counselling when they need it.
Listening to young voices
Since the pandemic we have seen rising demand for mental health services, and we wanted to be prepared to meet the needs of young people, we created a strategic direction that included a youth-led ethos and vision for services that moved towards preventative services.
Depot is the result of Area 43’s youth-led ethos. At the beginning of 2021, off the back of the closure of many youth mental health services, Area 43 wanted to understand what young people needed now to address their post-pandemic landscape.
The answer came back, loud and clear! Consultation with our young community, both those who had used services and those who didn’t said the same thing. That young people were the experts in their own mental health, and what they needed was the ability to shape services as they needed.
Developing Depot
They wanted, non-clinical, stigma free, open access, early intervention in issues that impacted their wellbeing, and therefore wider mental health.
They wanted a safe space, facilitated by trusted professionals, that was informal in nature, to build relationships and support networks amongst their peers, get advice from people who were relatable and trustworthy, and where necessary guided into more formal interventions.
Having heard the request, we at Area 43 set about working with young people to design Depot…
A place on the high street
Young people wanted to be part of the community, they wanted to be seen, have a space that was uniquely for them, and welcomed them in the heart of the community. They worked with us to raise funds for a large building to house our ambitious project on the High St in the middle of Cardigan.
Next we needed a name, young people suggested and voted on the name Depot, partly to recognise the roots of our building as the old post office depot, but also to represent the way station we were creating in young people’s lives…a stop on a brilliant journey.
From there we haven’t looked back, young people manage every aspect of the service, from the code of conduct for the space, the services provided, the activities that happen and how we provide the much needed support the young people of our community need.
Depot as an Early Support Hub
Young people wanted a hub to address all areas affecting their mental health, and here we are, partners operate from the space, we provide employment support, as well as preventative mental health services and support. Depot is the support network that young people said they needed…and now our young people want to help others!
For the past two years our young people have been advising others around what makes Depot so special to them, they have produced documentaries, written funding bids, lobbied politicians and launched new services based on what they did here in Depot.
If you would like to find out about how they did it and follow their journey in changing the world, follow their journey on our social media channel, other than that if you are under the age of 25, pop in and see for yourself what Depot means so much to the community it serves!
