OUR PRIVACY POLICY

When a young person or parent contacts Visyon by telephone, our friendly Initial Contact team answer. They are here to listen, help and guide you towards the right support, either with Visyon or with another organisation. Similarly, if somebody makes contact via email, the Initial Contact team will respond.

If you are making a referral into Visyon, we will need to take some details about the person who is seeking support. We store all the information confidentially on our secure database. The details needed include the name, address, date of birth, telephone number/email and GP of the person. We also need to understand a brief outline of the support needed from the person, so that we can provide the most appropriate help. If a young person refers (under the age of 18) we also need to know who has parental responsibility.

Although we cannot offer immediate support when somebody calls Visyon for the first time, we can offer advice and information about websites, organisations and apps which might be helpful. If we are worried about someone’s safety or feel someone is at risk, there are things we will need to do to make sure that support is there for the person involved – which means our safeguarding team ensuring that everyone is safe.

We require the name of the young person before we can offer any service. We need a method of contact, usually a telephone number.

Visyon has no crisis line or advice line. If you require an anonymous service, please note our signposting document for other support services that may be able to help.

For anyone 12 years and under we will need parental consent and awareness that a referral is being made. In most cases we feel it is beneficial for parents/ carers to be aware the young person is access support. If the person requesting support does not want this, we will discuss the induvial situation. Where we will need to speak with parents or guardians, if there is a safeguarding need or we are concerned about someone’s safety. We make the young person requesting support aware of this and can offer help and support to have the discussion with the parent/carer.

We may contact you on the number you have provided if we need to re-arrange a session, or if a member of the safeguarding team needs more information.

After obtaining initial details, we offer an appointment with one of our Visyon practitioners. We call this an Open Access session and is a chance for the person needing support to talk through their difficulties, so that we can understand how we might help. If we believe we are not the correct service to help at this stage, we may provide details of other services which might be more appropriate.

Each session lasts around thirty minutes, or slightly longer if needed.

You can bring along any support which might help with making you comfortable. This could be a parent(s) or guardian(s) a relative or friend or even your favourite blanket, so long as you are comfortable to talk in front of them.

We usually schedule these appointments after school hours (after 3.30 pm) on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Sessions take place over the telephone, via zoom or in person. If in person, the person accessing support attends our Congleton or Crewe base.

The address of our Congleton base is:

Fellowship House

Park Road, Congleton, CW12 1DP

We have a small amount of parking at the front of the building and roadside parking is available with a 2hr limit. There is a public pay and display car park close by next to Congleton Library.

The address of our Crewe base is:

6 Chantry Court

Forge Street, Crewe, CW1 2DL

We aim to schedule the Open Access session within ten days of the initial referral, or sooner, but can sometime vary due to the demands on the service.

Therapy sessions will be in the first available slot with one of our Young Person Counsellors. Support from the Wellbeing Team will be in the first available slot with a Wellbeing Practitioner. Group sessions will be in the next available session. Sometimes we refer to more than one service, such as group sessions and individual therapy.

As far as possible, we offer a choice between face to face, telephone or zoom sessions. Occasionally, there are restrictions

We conduct face-to face sessions in our Congleton or Crewe base, at the addresses shown above. We try to schedule sessions at the venue closest to home.

One-to-One Counselling - We offer six sessions - One session per week at the same time each week.

Wellbeing Services – We offer eight sessions - One session per week at the same time each week.

This depends on our waiting lists, which can fluctuate. We can offer a rough estimate at the time of referral, but we would hope to be seeing you within three months, or sooner.

Our telephone lines are open between the hours of 9 am to 5pm Monday to Thursday, and 9 am until 1 pm Fridays. We have no crisis service and no telephone line operation evenings, weekends, or Bank Holidays.

If you or somebody you know is experiencing crisis level, we recommend you contact:

· The Cheshire Mental Health Crisis Line - Tel 0800 145 6485

· The Staffordshire Crisis Team – Tel 0300 123 0907 (Option 1)

If you or somebody you know is experiencing an immediate, life-threatening emergency requiring mental or physical health assistance, you should call 999 or go to Accident & Emergency.

We store all information on our secure database which is General Data Protection Regulation (2018) compliant. Our Counsellors, Wellbeing Practitioners, Initial Contact Team, and Safeguarding Officers, have access to this database, so that they can see the referral and other information. All team members are bound by confidentiality and will only access information concerning clients they are working with, to offer the best service possible. This is a live database, kept up to date. If you would like more information concerning this matter, you may request our privacy notice.

Your sessions are confidential, and we can do this if it is something you would like us to do and give us your consent. If you are under 12, we can provide basic information. We could also support a conversation with a parent if this is something you ask for. If we are concerned about your safety, we may need to need to pass information onto parents / carers so they can support you.

We can provide a report if this is something you would like and will need written permission from you to do so. This will be a brief factual report on your timeline with Visyon and a minimum of 10 days’ notice is required to prepare this.

Visyon is not a service that can formally diagnose or medicate. We cannot provide mental health assessments to our clients. Our assessment meetings are designed to find if our service is suited to you and not to provide a diagnostic outcome. If this is a service you require you need to contact your GP.