Maya Centre Nominated for Prestigious Award
Counselling Centre Up For Guardian Public Services Award
Oct 12, 2009
“Staff at the Maya Centre are delighted and honoured to have been nominated for the Guardian Public Service Awards, which recognises the Centre’s work with the complex mental health needs of women in Islington and beyond,” says Emma Craig, director.
The Centre focuses on providing a safe, quiet space where women living in poverty can find strategies to deal with chaos in their lives. Walls are themed with orange splashes to represent Mayan culture and a serene atmosphere provides comfort to women who have little of it in their lives. Islington, the borough where they are located, has the highest rate of disparity of any local authority in England.
Jasmine Tonge, a staff member who receives visitors, has witnessed major transformations. “One of our clients, when she first came in was literally clinging to the wall trying to hide…at the end she had completely come alive and would announce herself, talk to me, which she never would have done before,” she says.
Eight counsellors provide free, year-long counselling in seven languages targeting refugees and asylum-seekers, Irish women, older women and women affected by domestic violence.
Apart from offering individual conselling for up to a year, they also can introduce women to a variety of different therapeutic groups targeted to meet specific needs.
The Maya Centre is also promoting an initiative to address the widely acknowledged problems associated with poverty and mental health. Interested members of the public are being invited to a parliamentary briefing to take place on 11 March 2009 at Portcullis House in London to discuss the need for psychodynamic thinking in tackling the links between poverty, deprivation, and long term-mental distress.
What is Psychodynamic Counselling?
Literature provided by the Maya Centre states:
"Psychodynamic counselling looks at the underlying roots of unhappiness in the past. It is thus able to engage with severe and chronic emotional problems in the present. Weekly individual counselling over an extended period of time...usually produces profound and enduring change."
They are also trying to avoid the stigma of this kind of counselling being only for those wealthy enough to afford it. "Such counselling should be made available for the most needy people in our society," says their brochure.
Winners will be announced on 24 November 2009. Past winners have seen boosts in employee morale and reputation, as well as raised profiles locally and in the UK. Last year, Islington Council was runner-up in the Innovation and Progress category.
The Guardian Public Services Awards celebrate leaders in other categories such as Diversity and equality, Frontline engagement, Citizenship and volunteering, among others.
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