Our Story
A Safe Space For All
A Safe Space to be Me was born in March 2016 and very quickly grew from a very small grass roots community group based in Antrim to one that now has 2 main bases in the Northern Trust locality but provides outreach across N.I.
A Safe Space to be Me, as we know it now, came about when our Senior Director moved to Crumlin with her family (4 neurodivergent children with additional needs) and very quickly realised that Crumlin had no service provision (other than a GP and Dental Surgery), within the community across the board.
After a lot of hard work behind the scenes, sleepless nights and very long hours, the vision became reality, and in August 2019 we acquired the premises for our Crumlin Community Hub. Our vision is one of inclusivity and togetherness to break down barriers that keep different sections of the community apart, lonely and isolated. We want to promote emotional well-being, engagement of services, and family support through a variety of means within the community of Crumlin in a space that is neutral and accessible to all.
As a grass roots community organisation whose main focus is around mental health and emotional wellbeing, we believe that the work we do benefits individuals of all ages, with a view to developing life skills and resilience, and also encourage the individuals to connect and become part of the larger community.
A community in which everyone matters.
Our vision is one of inclusivity and togetherness to break down barriers that keep different sections of the community apart, lonely and isolated.
Counselling Services
A majority of the work we do in the community is aimed at improving mental health. To date, we have provided nearly 13,000 free counselling sessions to over 1500 clients. This is a phenomenal amount but the impact of that on indiviuals you can't place a number on! We know it's having a huge, positive impact on the mental health of people in our communities.
We are a placement provider for Ulster University Students for several courses and we like to ensure that all our students have the opportunity to engage and learn in an environment that is both educational, supportive and community led. We provide our own specialist training for the trainees who are with us on placement, helping to ensure the quality of future counsellors.
All of our counsellor training programmes have been quality checked by the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society.
.
Our hope is to continue to grow as an organisation, as our community grows, adapting and meeting identified needs by introducing some potentially life changing projects that serve the borough and beyond. By tackling mental health issues head on and putting in the work, we want to ensure that every service user has the resilience to cope with anything in life.
Feel free to drop in, have a chat, have a cup of tea, talk about the weather, talk about how your feeling...