Users fear closure of mental health help service

Jon Trigger has been attending the sessions with assistance dog Bonnie for the last two years

Residents who say they rely on an evening community support group are worried about what they would do if it closes.

Starfish Health and Wellbeing in Stockton, which runs The Place to Be drop-in session for people struggling with their mental health, especially at night, said it was under threat due to a lack of funding.

Jon Trigger, 50, who has early onset dementia and is grieving for his mother, who died earlier this year, said: "I'd be lost without it."

Charity trustee Catherine Wakeling said the project's fixed-term NHS funding comes to an end this month and it had not been able to secure more.

Ms Wakeling said the annual cost of the sessions was about £26,000 to support three paid staff members, as well as cover bills and refreshments for users.

"Some people may have up to six hot drinks because they don't have heating at home or can't afford to have the kettle on," she said.

"This place is their life.

"Some people come here every night, they don't have anything or anybody else."

The aim of the charity is to support people with their mental health in the community

Mr Trigger said he did not want to face the possibility the group might close.

"It's a safe haven for people to go and a lot of us suffer with anxiety and we need to be around the right people and in the right group, and this is the right group and the right people," he said.

"I wouldn't have laughed as much over the last year or two going through what I've been through personally if I didn't have The Place to Be and these friends."

Debra Etherington, who now volunteers for the charity, said the sessions had helped her after the death of her daughter.

"[For] a lot of people this is their lifeline, they don't do anything else but they come here on a night," she said.

"If they weren't here I don't know what they would do because they depend on it, and I think a lot of people's mental health would go downhill.

"Mine certainly would because I'd have nothing to come out for."

Staff member Luke Weatherley, 31, said some people "go the whole day waiting just to come here".

"They're prisoners in their own home until they come here, it's important that we help bring them together," he said.

Debra Etherington received counselling from Starfish following the death of a family member and now volunteers

NHS North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board said a number of projects had received fixed-term funding to provide extra support in the community while the Stockton Wellbeing Hub was set up.

The hub opened last year, and a mental health peer support service was also now running in the town, it added.

A steering group was now considering how to allocate funding to other groups and would welcome bids from Starfish and other organisations once this had been agreed, it said.

The Place to Be was set up after feedback that there was nowhere to go in Stockton for support after 17:00

Paul Harrison, 55, who also comes to the sessions, said he struggled with anxiety and felt extremely lonely after his father died.

He found the group in April and said it had brought him out of his shell.

"Everyone has made me so welcome," he said.

"I can't thank them enough, really. They've been a Godsend to me."