Sheffield Mind is pleased to be able to offer a variety of talking therapies to adult relatives – parents, grandparents, siblings and partners - who have been affected by their relative serving in the armed forces.

Keeping Families in Mind provides counselling for a variety of practical and emotional issues that have been caused, or made worse, by the connection with military life. For example, a parent may be experiencing severe anxiety about their son or daughter being on active service, a partner may be experiencing isolation or they may have got into debt. Our trained counsellors are able to respond quickly, to offer support and a safe space to talk things through, so that family life isn’t even more disrupted.

In developing this bid to the MOD, we were helped by many organisations and individuals in South Yorkshire, including Cllr Tony Damms and Fayzeh Mohammed from the Armed Forces Covenant Board and Retired Major Charlie Helmns from the Yorkshire Regiment, British Army, all of whom were keen to see a service of this type available in the region.

Edyta Bancer, who manages the services says, 'We're very excited to be working with new partners. The armed forces representatives that have helped us develop this project have been very supportive and keen to explore new and innovative approaches. We're looking forward to working with them over the next three years'.