Donations
The Purpose of Our Work
What We Do
Where We Need Your Support
Ways of Giving
The Mapesbury Clinic provides culturally and linguistically appropriate counselling and support to refugees and asylum seekers. The counsellors are from different cultures and backgrounds; most of them have been refugees themselves.
People who come to the Clinic are often struggling with the emotional after-effects of traumatic and life threatening experiences and coping with multiple losses: loss of family and friends, loss of culture, loss of social support, loss of employment; all of which can lead to increased isolation and undermine self-confidence and self worth.
The experience of exile and the challenges of building a new life in an alien culture take their toll. The Clinic aims to help people find a way through these experiences, reduce their isolation and build back self-confidence and self-worth.
The Mapesbury Clinic is a young but growing service, responding to an increasing number of referrals of refugees needing counselling and support. People may refer themselves or reach us through other services, such as GP’s, health centres and community organisations.
Alongside the counselling service, advocacy and information is available to those who need help with practical problems, such as finding somewhere to live, resolving their legal status, or handling welfare, health or education problems. If these urgent practical needs can be met, then people are more able to face any deep-seated emotional issues or unresolved trauma from the past. For some it may be years after arriving in the UK that long buried problems finally come to light. For others it may be the first opportunity they have taken to tell their story and feel their experience has been witnessed and fully heard.
We need the support of donors to enable us to reach more people needing the Clinic’s services.
The Clinic is based in north west London, but people come to the service from all over the Capital and beyond, a testimony to the need for such a service. Many of those using the service have very few resources, so as well as providing counselling, the Clinic also pays for their travel costs.
Though most of the counselling we offer is shorter-term, the Clinic still operates a waiting list because of the level of demand. At the same time we are aware that many refugees need longer-term therapeutic interventions if they are to find real benefit and the Clinic wants to be able to respond to this need.
We rely on a team of multilingual counsellors and psychotherapist and currently provide counselling in twelve languages, but would like to offer more.
We have plans to meet these challenges and to make our services more accessible over the next three years by:
- Offering the Clinic from different locations in and around London,
including home visits to those who are housebound
- Expanding the Clinic’s team of counsellors and psychotherapists
to be able to offer longer-term therapy for those who need it
- Expanding the number of skilled practitioners and languages available in the Clinic by training more multilingual counsellors and psychotherapists, including refugees.
Your donation can help us achieve these goals.
A One-off Donation will help the Clinic to continue to provide counselling and support to refugees and asylum seekers. Please complete and return this form with your donation, unless you wish to donate anonymously.
One-off Gift - click here to email the Mapesbury Clinic
A Regular Gift to the Clinic has enormous value because it means we can plan more effectively for the future and work with confidence towards achieving the goals we have set ourselves to expand our services and reach more people who need them.
Regular Gift - click here to email the Mapesbury Clinic.
