How Does It Work? 

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Each person participating in IMP;ACT will work with a dedicated IMP;ACT Co-ordinator for up to 12 months. This will be their key worker throughout their time with the service.  After referral and assessment by the Co-ordinator, each person accessing IMP;ACT will be given a brief and structured course of mentoring and emotional-resilience support.  Mentoring will be provided by qualified counsellors at Open Minds in a series of four hour-long, weekly sessions. 

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What Happens After Referral?

 

An IMP;ACT co-ordinator will make an appointment with you to talk about your needs. If the IMP;ACT service is right for you, this person will become your Co-ordinator for 12 months.  We will then offer you 4 sessions of one to one support with an IMP;ACT mentor who will help you rebuild your ability to cope with the distress in your life. You will meet your Co-ordinator again once mentoring is complete.

 

What is Mentoring?

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You are supported initially with 4 – 6 sessions of Emotional Resilience (EmRes) Mentoring. 

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This is focussed support, tailored around your needs and your own identified triggers to suicidal distress.

 

Mentoring helps you by re-building your ability to overcome what life throws at you, and help you to identify the issues leading up to you attempting suicide, as well as the immediate triggers which ‘pushed you over the edge of despair’. 

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They will help you to find the things within yourself, and within your life, which make things better AND worse for you, and help you develop plans and ways of surviving these.  More than this, they will help you see that you are good enough and you deserve better, even when life feels overwhelming and awful. 

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It is important that you work with the mentor before moving on with the IMPACT Co-ordinator, so that we know you have coping mechanisms and a safety plan in place for times when you feel suicidal in future.

Each EmRes mentor is a highly skilled, qualified counsellor, drawing on these skills, but not EmRes Mentoring is different from counselling. The EmRes Mentoring programme has been designed for this purpose by the IMP;ACT Team – creating an ‘off the rack’ approach to support.  For example the mentor can access appropriate, tailored resources around conversation skills or social isolation to guide individuals to improve these. 

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What Happens After Mentoring?

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Your IMP;ACT Mentor will meet with your IMP;ACT Co-ordinator before you move onto the next stage of support. The Mentor will share information that can help the Co-ordinator build an action, safety and life plan to help you manage your emotions, relationships and any obstacles you might be encountering in your life. 

 

Your IMP;ACT Co-ordinator will then meet with you and look at the things in your life which get in the way of you living happily, healthily and well. They will work with you to find ways to resolve ongoing issues and find other services which can meet your needs.

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Co-ordination forms a package of support around the individual aimed at developing psychological well-being, emotional resilience, life-connections and the coping skills to manage future life distress. This includes:

 

• Emotional well-being calls focussed on building the individual’s emotional resilience and coping skills week to week. This allows the co-ordinator to identify triggers and signs of deteriorating mental health, and put support and strategies in place for the individual to manage their distress

 

• Co-ordination meetings focussed on action and safety plans; identifying ongoing dysfunctional behaviour and relationship patterns which contribute to the individual's difficulties. The co-ordinator sets manageable and achievable goals with the service user, working with them to make changes in their lives.

 

Co-ordination activities on behalf of the individual to enable them to access appropriate sources of support to achieve their goals and reduce suicidal behaviours. This might include attending meetings with them, or supporting them to complete PIP forms, and working on their behalf with other services such as Social Services or the NHS.