Teen Counselling Fundraising – how you can help

KYDS was started by Lindfield Rotary and Ku-ring-gai Council in 2005 to ensure that local young people have easy access to free, confidential counselling.

In 2019/20 KYDS provided 5462 counselling sessions to over 400 young people in Northern Sydney. This was 2000 more sessions than in the previous financial year.

These sessions were provided by a team of passionate and highly qualified mental health professionals; psychologists, counsellors, social workers, intern counsellors and provisional psychologists.

All the youth services in the region continue to struggle to meet unprecedented levels of demand for mental health support from our youth. The good news is that this generation of youth understands the value of reaching out for support early. Of course, if they’re going to keep reaching out for help when they need it throughout their lives, we need to make sure that help is available when they do reach out.

At the moment, that is not possible. At KYDS we currently have a waiting list of 50 young people. This represents a wait of several months for counselling support. This is way too long! We need to act quickly to raise the funds to ensure that we have counsellors available to meet the need now. At KYDS our goal is to ensure that our young people get the help they need, when they need it, for as long as they need it, it in a way that works for them.

Last year we provided 5462 free counselling sessions to the youth of Northern Sydney (2000 more than the previous year). Approximately 50% of this was funded through community support and small grants and foundations. For 2 years we also received Federal Government funding (DSS) that covered the remaining 50% of our costs and enabled us to meet the higher levels of demand during the COVID context. Unfortunately, this one-off funding was only for 2 years. Our Federal and State political representatives continue to advocate for more youth mental health funding for our region.

Now is the time to reach out to our fabulous community in Northern Sydney and ask for your support. Without more funding we will have to turn away 400-500 young people in the year ahead. Our goal is to quickly raise $15,000 - $30,000 to fund 100-200 counselling sessions that cost $150 each to provide.

How you can help:

Donating – 100 donations of $150 will enable us to achieve the goal, but any donation is appreciated

Following KYDS on social media; Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter
Liking all KYDS posts for the next 8 days
Sharing KYDS posts on your social media with a personal message to encourage your friends to donate

Thank you in advance for your support.

Helen Jarvis

Chair of Management Committee

KYDS Youth Development Service

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