Online Youth Counselling Service Wins Prestigious Local Government Award for Innovation



April 7, 2005 -- Kooth.com - an e-counselling and rapid referral service aimed at 11 to 25 year-olds in Stockport - picked up the Local Government Chronicle's Innovation Award on 14 March 2005 at a ceremony at London's Grosvenor Hotel.

The award comes one year to the day almost after Stockport Council's service was launched and is the second prize Kooth has been awarded in the space of a few weeks: in February it won the Big Chip Award for Best Public Sector Project.

The public recognition for the innovative nature of the service is added to by the fact that the site's target audience have shown that they recognise its value too because take up of the service has been higher than expected.

Via the Kooth.com website, young people can chat live (for free) to counsellors and support workers in one-to-one chat rooms or through a private messaging system. They can also use moderated peer-support message boards led by drug and alcohol workers. The counsellors, all qualified therapists, have received further training to provide help in an online environment.

The idea behind the service is to try to reach young people before they reach crisis point and, where appropriate, make referrals to members of a multi-disciplinary outreach team. The Kooth.com project is part of Stockport Council's commitment to early intervention programmes for young people and their families, thus reducing the number of young people and children who end up in care or the mental health system.

The service operates as a Public/Private partnership between Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (www.stockport.gov.uk) and Xenzone (www.xenzone.com) and is one that other local authorities can now buy into.

Quotes:
Elaine Bousfield, Managing Director of Xenzone, the site developers and providers of the e-counselling aspect of the service: "Many young people feel very at home with new technology and because of the anonymity of the Kooth service and the fact that our support workers are not part of the 'establishment' as they see it, they are much more willing to come forward and open up about their problems. I'm certain that we've been able to help a lot of young people that otherwise could have developed more serious difficulties."    

Michael Jameson, Assistant Director, Social Services and lead officer for this joint Council/PCT/private sector initiative: "A high number of Stockport's youth population have accessed the site and service and the feedback has been positive from all stakeholders."





Online Youth Counselling Service Wins Prestigious Local Government Award for Innovation