Our Background
Next Steps (Living, Dying, Grieving) began in 2017 as a volunteer-based community group dedicated to facilitating open conversations around dying, death and bereavement. In 2020 we formalised our service and officially became a Community Interest Company (CIC) limited by guarantee.
Our Company Registration number is 12679924.
Our Mission
Our vision is to create a central hub in Kingsbridge to support the mental health and wellbeing of adults, children and young people. We will offer indoor, outdoor and online therapy sessions, facilitate therapy support groups and run training workshops. Our mission is to provide a service that offers wide-ranging professional support and signposting for general mental health and wellbeing within our community, with a particular emphasis on life-changing or life-limiting illness, bereavement, grief and loss. The service will additionally deliver essential support for trainee counsellors and qualified counsellors, by offering placements, training, CPD, networking, supervision, an open-door policy and eventually a support line.
Who do we support?
We support people at all stages of life, death and grief, and our counsellors are trained to work with a diverse range of issues. We offer a wide range of mental health and wellbeing services, including counselling, coaching, ecotherapy, mindfulness, support groups and training workshops.
Our primary client base is located in and around Kingsbridge, South Devon. However, we also provide online therapy and can therefore reach a much broader geographical location.
and we specialise in supporting people who are facing life-changing, or life-limiting illness, bereavement, grief and loss.
Partly because we are located within the Kingsbridge Care Hub, home to the long-established Kingsbridge Age Concern, and partly because we do offer some free drop-in sessions, workshops or talks, we are sometimes mistaken for a charity. However, we are in fact a Community Interest Company (CIC).
What is a CIC?
A CIC is a non-profit organisation, a social enterprise that exists to benefit the community rather than its shareholders. A CIC is still a limited company, but its objectives are to offer services or to benefit the community in a certain way. To become incorprated as a CIC, we were required to submit a community interest statement which clearly outlined how our services would benefit the community. This information, along with annually submitted financial reports, is held in the public domain and can be found at Companies House. As a CIC, Next Steps is bound by an ‘asset lock’, which is a legally binding obligation to ensure that the company’s assets will only be used for its social objectives.
How are we funded?
Unlike a charity, a CIC is restricted in terms of the types of funding for which it can apply. However, there are funding opportunities available, and we actively apply for these grants to help minimise the cost of our services. Successful CIC grant applications are usually allocated to a specific purpose, so not all our services can benefit from the funds provided.
A CIC is a social enterprise that can trade and offer chargeable services to the public. We offer counselling and other wellbeing services at a cost to the client. However, our directors are working towards being able to provide these services at a much lower and affordable cost to those who would not otherwise be able to financially access them.
Each therapy session costs Next Steps £50. This covers room hire, office rental, equipment and utility costs, insurance, membership fees for governing bodies, as well as staff salaries, volunteer expenses, professional development training, clinical supervision and other ongoing business-related costs.
As our services expand and our successful outcomes become more widely recognised by mental health and wellbeing funding providers, we hope to obtain ongoing funding to part-subsidise these charges. We will then be in a position to invite clients to make sustainable and affordable contributions to their therapy sessions. Until this funding is achieved, we will not be able to part-fund your counselling or wellbeing sessions and will need to charge the published session fees.
Our Policies
Here is a list of our staff and volunteer policies and procedures. Each can be viewed on line or downloaded. You may attend our offices to print a copy.
All staff and volunteers are given an induction which includes information relating to these policies and procedures.
If you are a member of staff and have any questions, please contact your line manager.
Privacy, Disclosure and Cancellation Policy