If you or a young person you care for are struggling with self-harm or feeling suicidal, this is naturally very distressing and you need to know where to find help and support.

This page explains all about the support Emerge provides and contains links to other useful organisations.

If you would like to know more about our follow up support, do give us a call – just check out our projects page to get the number for your local team. We are also happy to speak with parents to listen and offer support and signposting.

If this would be helpful, just give us a call.

We know that following a crisis visit to A&E, things can feel very up in the air for the whole family and care plans can take a while to kick in and become established. Emerge offers follow up for young people for approximately three months following their discharge from hospital to provide support whilst things settle down and while the plans for other help and support begin to take effect.

Young people can ask for our support themselves, and parents and professionals can also refer young people as long as the young person knows about it and wants to be referred to us. Just complete the quick form at the bottom of this page

PARENTS AND PROFESSIONALS – HERE IS SOME IMPORTANT INFO TO READ IF A YOUNG PERSON YOU SUPPORT WOULD LIKE FOLLOW UP WITH US…

When we’re doing follow up support, we arrange to meet young people at times and places that suit them. This could be in school, or in a café or coffee shop. We don’t normally do home visits.

If a young person is under 18 and has self-referred, we will need a contact number for their parent or guardian and will call that person before the first follow up meeting to ensure that they are aware of who we are and what type of support we are offering. If there are concerns for a young person’s safety in travelling to and from a follow up session, it will be the responsibility of the parent / guardian to facilitate this. If you are at all concerned about this, please discuss it with us as we want our support to be something that is of help to the whole family during a difficult time, not an extra worry. Please also be aware that when we spend time with a young person, it’s not like a school trip where we’d be in loco-parentis. The parent / guardian remains responsible for the young person’s safety and should only agree to them meeting us if they’re confident that the arrangements are suitable. Again, please just discuss this with us.

As youth workers, we normally communicate directly with the young person once we’ve had an initial discussion with their parent or guardian. Therefore, we’ll work on the basis that arrangements made by the young person have the support of the parent, unless we are told otherwise.

When a follow up meeting has been arranged, the young person will meet one of our team in the location arranged.  We unfortunately can’t offer lifts but will travel to a place that suits the young person.  If we’re meeting them in school, of course we’ll liaise with the school about this too.

If a young person is aged 18 or over, we will make all arrangements directly with them and will not liaise with another person about it unless the young person requests this, or we need to do so in the interests of their safety.