5th January 2021

Following the Prime Minister’s lockdown announcement our centres will remain closed from today (5^th January) until at least Monday 22^nd February. The new variant of COVID-19 is highly contagious and, even with secure measures in place, presents a high risk to clients and staff meeting face-to-face of catching or transmitting the virus.

Despite formally organised therapy being allowed to continue for groups of up to 15 people, we have decided that to reduce the risk and protect people locally, we will not be opening our location-based services.

Thanks to the dedication of our staff and the support of our donors and commissioners we are prepared for this lockdown. We're still here for you and our online services will continue with four main addiction groups running 4 days-a-week and two main addiction groups running 5 days-a-week. All of our sub-groups, such as Disordered Eating, Family and Carers and Drugs Group, which were location-based, will now be held virtually.

All of our existing Hertfordshire-wide online projects including Disordered Eating, Family & Carers, Relationships and Gambling, will continue as they are.

We have 15 dedicated counsellors who lead these groups and all have families and vulnerable people that they care for. In order to keep them safe and virus free, they will be working from home to provide excellent facilitation via virtual services.

People who need help can still start therapy with us during this period. We are maintaining a telephone triage and online assessment procedure for new clients.

Our crèche team will provide virtual family activities around group therapy times to support parents with young children to play together.

From February 9^th our senior management team will consult with clients and counsellors to review the situation to decide whether our centres should remain shut beyond 22^nd February.

Unfortunately our Stevenage-based Charity Shops will remain closed in accordance with lockdown rules.

This has been a difficult decision to take in unprecedented times but we have learnt over the past 10 months that we are resilient. We continue to provide a good standard of care to people that need us and we can adapt to the challenges we face by working together and communicating.

Thank you for your continued support.

The Living Room.