Kooth - Update on change of offer in Durham and Tees Valley

Our platform provides a welcoming space for everybody, offering personalised mental health care that combines professionally qualified text-based 1-2-1 emotional support combined with self-help content, peer support and community activities. At the heart of our person-centred approach is a commitment to clinical excellence and governance, digital best practice and inclusivity.

Our approach will be limited to single-session focused, emotional support for a range of conditions or symptoms, aligned to  'Getting Advice’ and ‘Getting Help’ of the Thrive Framework.

Kooth has been pioneering the use of single session interventions and we are working with world renowned expert, Windy Dryden who is supporting our practitioner training and specialist supervision. Service Users complete our single session measure, the Session Wants and Needs Outcome Measure (SWAN-OM), that provides an overview of their needs and reasons for seeking support. SWAN-OM is the first ever digital outcome measure for a single session which we implemented in 2021 in partnership with the Anna Freud Centre.

The only change to the existing offer across Durham & Tees Valley, is that we will no longer be able to provide structured and long-term counselling support. However, service users can still have multiple' ‘single sessions’’ and drop in digital interventions. We are working closely with commissioners and local organisations to ensure robust and clear signposting pathways are in place to make sure young people are referred into the most appropriate ongoing support, especially those at risk or with more complex needs. We will ensure that young people who need more structured and goals-based interventions will be supported to access local provision as part of a local system approach to I-Thrive.

These changes will not affect the service being accessible in other areas of the North East and in these other areas the existing model remains the same.