New mental health facility opens for children in York
The Retreat charity is also expanding across the Pennines into Manchester.
A York-based mental health provider is opening a new facility in Strensall to meet a growing demand for services.
The Retreat has announced that they're also expanding across the Pennines to run services in Manchester.
They've purchased Hampden House in Manchester where it will provide specialist support for more people with their mental health. The Manchester service will be known as ‘The Retreat Manchester, at Hampden House’.
Doctor Kim Bevan is the Chief Officer at The Retreat, and says the mental health of young children in York has declined because of the pandemic: "Everyone is very different, so we pride ourselves in being able to tailor our therapy to the needs of each person.
"It’s been a very worrying time for people over the last year and we hope that we can support more people going forward as we begin to welcome more people to The Retreat.
"We’re privileged to be in a position to offer mental health services across sites, in York, in Manchester, and Nationally with our psychological therapy and assessment services."
This week marks Mental Health Awareness Week, which began on Monday 10th May. It is estimated that 1 in 6 people in the UK experiences a mental health problem in any given week.
Doctor Bevan says the Strensall site has been adapted to include a wide range of support to help children: "We have a sensory room, a high quality speech and language therapy facility, video technology that we can use in the building and a lot of play therapy tools as well.
"We have play therapists, psychotherapists and psychologists working together to help support children.
"We've been offering lots of online therapy and will continue to do so. What we wanted to provide to young people and families is a dedicated facility that they could go to.
"The Strensall site is an existing building which we've completely refurbished over the last year, and now we can offer the full range of children and young people's services for mental health and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
"We will be offering extensive face to face services from the 1st of June; we are offering some now, but we're waiting until we're fully mobilised before we offer them more widely.
"We work with children from the age of two right up until the age of eighteen".
Further information on The Retreat can be found here.