Syston Neighbourhood Mental Health Café

We’ve been open since June 23 and have so far supported around 500 people from Syston & the surrounding areas…
Wow, what a busy few months for the Syston Neighbourhood Mental Health Café!
The Café continues to provide local support to surrounding areas, so far, nearly 500 people have walked through our doors, whether it be in our social area, simply for a chat & a cuppa, or in our 1:2:1 area for more intensive support.
Due to how busy our earlier sessions were becoming, we’ve now increased our opening times, not only do we run from 12pm to 3pm, we now also open from 3.30pm to 6.30pm which means that attendees can pop along later in the afternoon when it’s a little quieter if they prefer.  We’ve also had to move into a larger room as we didn’t have enough space for attendees, a telling sign of how necessary the café is and how local support is much needed.
Whilst our social area continues to thrive with new games & puzzles introduced every couple of weeks, our 1:2:1 area is also seeing a large increase in the number of people needing face to face, immediate support.  Our Mental Health First Aid trained staff are able to guide attendees to other Mental Health services available to them 24/7, along with offering local voluntary, community and social services who can help to support with practical advice and information.
We also have a great team of volunteers who have made a real difference in our social area – Gillian, Bev, Charlotte, Mitchell and Jenny are fantastic additions to our team, they greet attendees at the door and make sure they feel welcome, helping them to find a seat, providing drinks and chatting to find out their reason for attending, a great way of ‘triaging’ each attendee so that we know how best to help them.  They all have fantastic local knowledge and have been amazing at making attendees feel listened to and supported.
Our fabulous coffee connect van continues to provide free high quality barista coffee, tea and hot chocolate to attendees with the addition of our new iced coffees when the sun shines – Scott, our fabulous barista is ready to make more of these as the Summer months approach (we hope!)
As well as serving our attendees with amazing coffees, Scott is also a brilliant musician, it was a real treat at the café recently to have him play digeridoo, Vietnamese mouth harp and Navaho Indian flutes, which brought a relaxing, calming feel to the social area & everyone loved it!”