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News

What's new ...

Find out what's new in Ongoing Support ...

Find out about upcoming events ...

Find out about our upcoming and current projects ...

House Move

Due to unexpected personal circumstances (bereavement of a close family member), we have had to move home, of course taking Ongoing Support with us. This has been a difficult time for us, and we apologise if we have not responded to any recent requests for information via the website. We are now fully on-line once more at our new address in St Austell, and it's business as usual. Our new contact details have been updated at the bottom of the page.

Business Plan (January 2004)

What a great experience ... writing a business plan, and what an incredible feeling to finally get it finished ... well, for this year anyway! We didn't realise how much of our time would be taken up with researching the market place, and producing the cash flow and profit and loss forecasts, but we have learned so much along the way. Whilst writing the business plan we discovered some potential problems for Ongoing Support (the 'W' of our 'SWAT' analysis), some of these being our own financial position for the next two years, getting Ongoing Support known and recognised in the community, and coming up against individuals belief systems (e.g. "I don't need any support"). We have also found some gaps in the market, where Ongoing Support can set up projects to offer much needed support, an example of this is in the area of Workplace Counselling (read below for more details about this). Another learning curve was around the importance of networking with other agencies and organisations ... there is so much support available, and we think it is important for Ongoing Support to contribute towards raising awareness of the services on offer in Cornwall. So many of our clients are not aware of services available to them, particularly if they have financial problems, as they presume most services cost money - this usually means that individuals reach crisis point before they receive any support. We hope that it isn't too long before local services are so well known, that individuals seek support pro-actively, before getting to a seemingly 'hopeless' situation.

The majority of our business plan can be seen here (just click), Our full business plan is available on enquiry (we welcome enquiries from professionals or organisations interested in purchasing our services or funding our work).

Any comments or feedback on our business plan would be greatly appreciated.

Workplace Counselling (January 2004)

Whilst doing market research for our business plan, we have realised that there is very little support for employees, and employers of businesses and organisations in Cornwall, and how this effects both the local economy and social welfare of individuals at home and at work. This has inspired us to develop some workplace focused support services, which include mediation, counselling, supervision and training. We are also looking into some funded projects to support employees of the care industry - these projects would ran alongside and compliment existing services for carers (both at home and in the workplace).

Click here to find out more about these services, whether workplace counselling is needed, and if it works.

Website Problems (August 2003)

We apologise if anybody has been unable to access our website over the past couple of months ... we encountered some problems whilst changing over the domain name to our website provider. Thanks for being patient!

Pilot Groups (June 2003)

We are starting to run some pilot 'Life Groups' in the following areas (for starters) ...

	Bodmin
	St Austell

There will be three groups, each covering different issues:

Relationships Life Group

Establishing and maintaining good relationships with partners, friends ... or anyone!

Parenting Life Group

Enjoy your parenting, learn new skills and find out what makes you and your kids tick ...

Stress and Chill Life Group
An opportunity to get those issues off your chest, and learn how to cope when life get too much!

Each group will be run on a weekly basis for two hours, and will cost only £5.00 per person. In all cases the first group will be free! The £5.00 will go towards refreshments, room-hire and other costs (such as handouts).

The purpose of running these pilot groups, is to establish the need for such groups, and to evaluate their costs and effectiveness. The evaluation will then go towards obtaining grants, and making these groups free at the point of use to any individual needing support (client confidentiality will be maintained at all times).

The groups will be advertised locally (see a PDF poster here) over the next few weeks before the groups get up and running. There will then be a free coffee morning (afternoon or evening), for anyone to join, enquire further, and get a feel for the groups.

Please contact us for more details about the groups, or to book a place.

Finalised Logo

Ahh ... at last we have finalised the Ongoing Support logo ... we must say a big thank you to www.fonthead.com who have allowed their 'good dog cool' font to be freeware and to be used however and whenever! The finished logo means that we can now go ahead with the printing and start our promotional campaign in North Cornwall and Restormal.

Confidentiality Policy and Constitution

We have now added a confidentiality policy and a constitution to our website, you can find them by clicking on the links here, or going through the 'our policies' page. Now that these policies are completed we can now start to apply for funding (yippee), a long awaited stage of Ongoing Support.

Child Protection Policy

We now have a Child Protection Policy (which you may have already noticed), you can find it by clicking on the link above.

Whilst researching material for our Child Protection Policy, we did not find an organisation who had published their full comprehensive policy for us to take as a guideline, or copy from. As we feel that this is such an important policy for anybody to have, regardless of what context they may work with children in, we have decided to publish our 'full' policy online, with the permission for anybody to use and copy from if they wish. We hope that others will find this useful and time-saving!

We would like this opportunity to thank the individuals who have already given us feedback on our policy, and to invite anybody to contact us with your comments or feedback, which may help us to evaluate and improve it.

Psychotherapy Support Group

We have plans to set up a psychotherapy support group in Bodmin, starting in March. The group will be on a weekly basis and each session will be for 2 hours. To initially launch the group, the cost of each session will be ₤12.50 (normally ₤15.00) for the period of six months. If you are interested in joining the group, please contact us for more details.

Depression Workshop ... September 2002

We have recently delivered a depression workshop to the Nightlink volunteers who operate a county-wide free-phone listening service for anyone who is, or has suffered from mental health problems.

During the workshop we were able to look at some of the different types of depression, and the varying symptoms presented by depressed clients. We also looked at diagnosis and treatment including medication, and some practical suggestions on appropriate responses to clients drawing on theory from Transactional Analysis and Neuro-linguistic Programming.

We were made very welcome by the Nightlink volunteers, who were enthusiastic and participated throughout, making the workshop both enjoyable and successful for all.

Nightlink is an out of hours service run by trained volunteers who have experience of mental health issues and empathy for people in distress. Calls to Nightlink are treated as strictly confidential to the service and caller, and the caller may remain anonymous. Callers may not be in crisis to call Nightlink, but may like someone to talk to in confidence. Informal carers can also call Nightlink.

The Nightlink service is currently available on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday between 8pm and 1am on the following free-phone number:

0808 8000 306

If you are interested in helping others through the Nightlink service, you can contact Darren Bottrill for further details.

Business progress ... June 2001

In January we officially became a Limited Company with an entry in the yellow pages. Since then we have been busy designing our letterheads, posters, leaflets and business cards ready for printing, and also writing our business plan. We still have a long way to go ~ after the business plan is finished we will be concentrating on writing our presentation pack and applying for funding.

We have both struggled with writing the business plan, especially doing market research ~ something that neither of us have done before, but thanks to some support from Graeburn Owen at Mid-Cornwall Enterprise Trust (our business adviser), Chris Bird at PI Solved (our promotional adviser and friend) and Paul Aberdeen (our financial advisor and friend) our business plan is starting to take shape. Although we have found it hard, we have realised the great benefits of writing our own business plan and the advantages of knowing our business inside out, so overall it has been quite a rewarding experience for both of us.

At this stage of our business set up, we are both working in full time employment so progress can sometimes be slower than we would like, but we know that this will change in time and we are enjoying the slow unfolding of our business, giving us time to reflect and learn before going 'full steam ahead'.