About Us
We are a UK registered charity offering mental health support and suicide prevention, we have a 24/7 call centre and we work with a lot of the main services to offer support when and where it is needed. Based in Gainsborough Lincolnshire.
Bearded Fishermen Charity have been around as a charity since 2020, we started out supporting mental health and suicide prevention by offering a 24/7 free number to call and a crisis number for emergencies. We have a peer-to-peer support service, and we can also offer counselling and referrals to other support agencies. We also have our crisis intervention team with a fast response vehicle that are frec 3 first responders and mental health suicide prevention trained. We have grown from strength to strength over the last 3 years and increased our call Centre to now 10 lines and with the capacity to double that if needed. We work closely with people to help prevent suicide and to maintain and build on getting peoples wellbeing to a better level to be able to sustain a better work and family life.
Mick Leyland and I (Chair & Vice Chair) both have lived experience of depression and suicide attempts in the past, we used fishing as our therapy, and we lost a friend on the lake to suicide so we setup Bearded Fishermen on the lakeside to help fishermen. This was October 2019, we supported men initially until lockdown with group chats but then we got asked to help women and children too. During lockdown we helped local councils and groups to support people struggling with anxiety and depression issues and became a charity in March 2020 as we needed more space and took on more volunteers to help.
Our core objectives are the preservation of life from suicide and the support to all from mental health and suicidal tendencies. To offer support to those in need urgently and to keep supporting while waiting lists are high. To provide counselling as soon as possible to those in need to help the family wellbeing. We have a 24/7 support call centre that takes calls from people needing immediate help, we have an on-call trained Frec 3 support team that is called out to emergencies via the call centre or the emergency services. We are suicide trained with assist and with mental health support to help in situations of potential suicide and for people that are struggling. We have pathways for referral to specialist services when we need them, and we have counsellors to help with face-to-face appointments. We aim to be quick to assist to help prevent suicide by offering support right away. Our call centre now takes calls from all over the UK, and we get referrals for telephone support from different places throughout the country from NHS Crisis teams to the Samaritans and other charities, doctors, and agencies that all get people in need to call us. We are currently setting up a much larger premises that will incorporate a public access hub for support and warm space, this will allow people to walk in and talk to our peer supporters and also be a place to combat loneliness and a meeting area, we will also be running different groups from the centre to allow the community to get out and mix with other people and help with their wellbeing. We offer the chance to join in with different projects from an online working radio and tv station, gaming groups, as well as support groups for teens, men, and ladies. working with bro pro UK and Andy's man club.
During 2022 our call centre took 3054 calls to our freefone support number, we also had our streetwatch team on the streets in 3 different towns during the evening, we have stopped around 300 plus suicides and there have been 2429 face to face appointments with our peer to peer supported and counsellors. In 2023 we took on 167 new face to face clients and took around 2700 calls on our 0300-support number, so far its only 3 weeks into 2024 and we have been extremely busy. We have offered a lot of support to members of the community in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. We have been able to offer support without the year-long waiting lists of many other agencies and this in turn has helped to save lives. We have supported everyone from the age of 8 years old up to 96 years old. We offer support in schools and nursing homes as well as to workers in businesses and factories around the area and we are growing. We work with a lot of businesses, we also work with the NHS, LPFT, emergency services like EMAS and Yas, Fire Services Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, and Humberside Police forces. North Lincs council, Bassetlaw council, WL Council and Yorkshire and hull councils. Lincolnshire and Bassetlaw education schools Local support and community groups in and around Lincolnshire, Notts and Humberside.
We are looking at funding to help us to be able to continue offering this support and to have centres open in other places, we currently have our main centre which runs everything and a second smaller centre manned one day a week on the Drax power station. we have been asked to run a centre in Nottingham, Doncaster, Scunthorpe and Goole but this will take time and resources to eventually do this.
Press releases
Join the Fight Against Mental Health Crisis: Your Support Can Save Lives
In this time of crisis, when mental health issues have reached alarming levels, our organization stands firm in its commitment to breaking the... read more
13.02.2024 • By Bearded Fishermen Charity
New release charity single for Mental health support and suicide...
Bearded Fishermen Mental Health Charity gets A new Chart entry Single Bearded Fishermen Charity are a UK based charity offering mental... read more
06.12.2023 • By Bearded Fishermen Charity
