Counselling service for young people gets £2k boost

A young people's counselling service is able to provide its staff with supervisors thanks in part to a £2,000 donation from the Louis Baylis (Maidenhead Advertiser) Charitable Trust.

Windsor and Maidenhead Youth and Community Counselling Service provides free help to young people in the Royal Borough.

Windsor's Youth Talk and Maidenhead's Number 22 services merged last year to form the service, but they still operate in the both locations.

Co-ordinator Shula Tajima explained that the charities, based in Marlow Road, Maidenhead and Alma Road in Windsor have combined annual costs of £60,000 a year to run.

The major expense is paying for supervisors who hold monthly meetings with counsellors.

The Advertiser trust's £2,000 donation is used to pay for this provision, which the service must arrange in accordance with British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapy regulations.

Money also pays for training programmes to keep counsellors up-to-date with modern problems and techniques. Shula gave the example of the impact having easy access to internet pornography has on young people.

The 55-year-old said: "We are getting much more complex issues coming up. We need to make sure our counsellors have the skills and expertise to deal with that.

"A huge issue we have with young people is the internet and keeping safe in that environment.

"They have access to pornography at the click of a couple of buttons. The images that they are seeing are damaging for them. It gives them a distorted view on reality."

The Louis Baylis (Maidenhead Advertiser) Charitable Trust receives about 80 per cent of the Advertiser's profits. It distributes them to charitable organisations around Maidenhead.