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Help When You Need It

Help When You Need It aims to provide people with flexible, tailored support at the right time and place. The Bristol based service will also link with other agencies to overcome the barriers that can limit people from achieving their goals.

Second Step works in partnership with St Mungo's and Missing Link to provide support across Bristol.  We cover the areas Central and South (BS1-4 and BS13-15).  St Mungo's covers North and East Bristol (BS5-11 and BS16) and Missing Link is city wide.

If you think you or someone you support would benefit from this service then please complete the referral form or contact us on at tier2@second-step.co.uk

Please also use this email address for any enquires.

Who is the service for?

Help When You Need It is for individuals who are 16 and above, live in Bristol and have at least one of the following support needs:

  • Support needed to maintain accommodation/tenancy or secure accommodation (please note, we can’t work with individuals with no fixed abode or who are homeless – please contact the council’s Citizen Service Point or St Mungo’s Outreach team)
  • Support needed to manage physical health and wellbeing
  • Support needed to manage mental health and wellbeing
  • Support needed to maximise income, reduce debts, or find paid work
  • Support needed to prevent loneliness and isolation
  • Support needed to stay safe

Our offer

We passionately believe that with the right support, everyone has the ability to recover and have good quality of life.

Our Recovery Coaches will work with you to understand your needs and support you to address some of the challenges you face.

Our service is underpinned by:

  • Trauma-informed practice (people feel safe, hopeful and validated)
  • No wrong door (no one turned away)
  • Trusted relationships (honest, transparent, joint decision-making)
  • Realising potential (strengths-based, positive risk-taking)
  • Achievable goals (SMART, outcome-focused plans)
  • Equalities (culturally-appropriate)

What can I get help with?

Depending on your needs, some of the key activities we may be able to support you with include:

  • Support to access physical and mental health services and encourage healthy lifestyles
  • Support to reduce the need for crisis and emergency interventions
  • Support with recovery from domestic violence or trauma related issues
  • Support with maintaining your tenancy, accessing new accommodation or any difficulties in your accommodation that may lead to homelessness (please note, as we are a time-limited service we may not be able to support individuals through the rehousing process).
  • Support to help you feel safe
  • Support to access services that help you to maintain your independence
  • Support to feel connected, including support to access the internet and other sources of information
  • Support to access advocacy services
  • Support with seeking voluntary work, training, education and paid work opportunities
  • Support with finances such as welfare benefits advice and signposting to Money Advice Services
  • Provide you with timely information and advice services, signposting to health and wellbeing agencies
  • Support to access the community such as signposting to local community and activity groups, and support to keep in contact with family and friends.

What we can't help you with

Unfortunately we aren’t able to support you with the following:

  • Tasks that are classed as personal care/domestic duties such as cooking, cleaning, DIY, gardening etc.
  • Counselling or befriending services

We can however, put you in touch with the services who would be able to support you in either of these areas.

Follow this link for other mental health related resources and services around Bristol and the west of England.

Our approach

  • We will be flexible and meet people’s individual needs
  • Support will be time-limited meaning that you will be offered help to sort any difficulties, and once they are, the support will end
  • We will be easily accessible if people need to come back to the service
  • We will work in a joined-up way with other organisations and parts of the social care system
  • We will make the most of people’s independence, finance, health and wellbeing. We will support people to do things for themselves and gain independence so that they may not need the same help in the future
  • We operate a ‘no wrong door’ policy. This means that people are redirected successfully to the services that will best help them when they need it.

How to refer to the service

'If you think you or someone you support would benefit from this service then please complete the referral form and go through the privacy notice. For all enquiries/referral submissions, please contact us at tier2@second-step.co.uk.

Please note, we cannot accept referrals that have not gone through the privacy notice.'

If you would like to report or discuss mistreatment of yourself or another vulnerable adult you can use our safeguarding policy.  Find out how here.

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At Second Step we believe in recovery
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For us, that means believing in hope, courage and change
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Recovery becomes a reality when we're confident, courageous and inspire hope in one another
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Once we have hope and courage, change can happen
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And we can achieve great things