Safe Harbour: a wellbeing lifeline for Cornwall’s charity workers

Spend your working days looking after other people, and it is easy to let your own wellbeing slip down the list. A new service launching across Cornwall and the South West wants to make sure the people who spend their careers supporting others get some support back.

What Safe Harbour offers

Safe Harbour is a new Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) offering affordable, professional wellbeing support to charities and businesses across Cornwall and the South West. It provides confidential counselling and wellbeing support designed to help employees get assistance early, before stress and pressure build into something harder to manage.

The service was created in response to growing levels of workplace stress, burnout and emotional pressure, and it is aimed squarely at organisations whose staff spend their days looking after other people, whether that means supporting vulnerable communities, driving social impact, caring for customers or leading small teams.

Why it was created

Lisa Topf, Outreach Coordinator, said the idea grew out of what the team kept seeing in the sector.

“Every day we see how much pressure people working for their communities carry. They are often supporting others through difficult circumstances while managing their own challenges. We believe the people doing this vital work deserve support too.”

Safe Harbour was built around a simple belief: people can only support others effectively when they feel supported themselves.

Built on more than a decade of counselling experience

Safe Harbour is developed from the experience of Counselling for Social Change, a Cornwall-based charity that has been providing affordable, trauma-informed counselling since it was founded in 2012. The charity (registered charity number 1160047) has provided free and low cost counselling across the South West and the wider UK.

More information on Safe Harbour and Counselling for Social Change is available at findsafeharbour.co.uk.

📷Psychologist offering comfort and empathy to a patient during a counseling session, focusing on mental health support