It has been far too long since we updated everyone about what Clockwork are up to, and there’s plenty to tell you about – marathon efforts; music festivals; our counselling referral system and more…

Marathons

It’s marathon season at Clockwork. One of our Trustees, Peter Green, will be running the (rescheduled) London Marathon on Sunday 3rd October. Pete is raising money for Clockwork; as well as for Matthew’s Friends, a charity based in Lingfield, who provide information and support on the use of the Ketogenic Diet as a treatment for drug resistant epilepsy in children. 

The following Sunday, 10th October, one of our advisory team, Kelly, will be running the Royal Parks Half Marathon in London. Kelly will also be raising money for Clockwork, along with Mind, one of the UK’s leading mental health charities. 

We wish Pete and Kelly all the very best, and we will all be cheering them on. Please do consider sponsoring their huge efforts – it will hopefully help them keep going in the home straight! 

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?userUrl=PeterGreen21&pageUrl=3

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-display/showROFundraiserPage?userUrl=KellyDoughty6&pageUrl=1

Kenfest

Saturday 21st August saw the long awaited return of the magnificent Kenfest for its fifth edition, after Covid prevented the festival taking place last year. Kenfest is held in beautiful woodland in Oxted, and is a wonderful day of grassroots music imbued with a strong sense of community. Since its beginning, Sandy Kenny and all the Kenfest team have shown proactive and tireless support for positive community action and mental health support, and as part of that have once again decided, extremely generously, to donate their proceeds to Clockwork. 

A team of volunteers from Clockwork were there on the day to support Kenfest and help the event run smoothly for those attending. You may have spotted some of us during the day: parking cars, checking tickets, handing out head dresses, and occasionally sneaking away to enjoy some of the music… 

It is always a highlight of our year to be part of Kenfest: it is a wonderful event, and we are so grateful for their ongoing support of Clockwork. We are already looking forward to next year’s edition.

Counselling

We continue to work with Heads Together East Surrey to offer counselling referrals for 14–25-year-olds based in the local area. This service has been very well used since we introduced it just over a year ago, with over thirty young people referred by Clockwork for free counselling, and we have received very positive feedback from those who have used the service. 

So far, referrals to Heads Together have been offered counselling sessions over Zoom, due to the coronavirus pandemic, but we are exploring the potential of being able to offer face to face appointments in Oxted, and hope to be able to provide an update on this in the next couple of months. 

Meanwhile, we have referred several young people for face-to-face appointments to two independent counsellors, both based in Warlingham. As with Heads Together, Clockwork funds these sessions so they are free to access for service users. Both these counsellors run their own successful private practises, which means they often do not have the capacity to take on new referrals, but we will continue to work with them where possible to complement and enhance our counselling offering. 

Oxted School

As a new school year begins, we are in regular communication with Oxted School regarding their counselling provision, and what Clockwork can do to hopefully help ensure students face much shorter wait times to access in-school counselling services. In previous years, we have provided funding for an additional day of counselling at Oxted School. We remain committed to supporting the counselling service at Oxted School, and hope to be able to announce a new agreement with the school in the near future.

We are also looking to fund a programme of mindfulness and wellbeing seminars, delivered by Mental Health First Aid England, for teachers and students at Oxted School in the coming year. We hope this will be a valuable aid for the school community – both teachers and students – in promoting good mental health awareness, understanding and support. 

And in other news… 

Clockwork will be hosting a ‘Parent and Carers Support Group’ on Monday 4th October from 7.30pm to 9pm at Oxted United Reformed Church. This is open to any parents and carers, and is an informal discussion group, offering a secure, friendly and confidential space to discuss concerns and worries, share experiences and offer each other support. 

We are still a registered good cause on the Tandridge Together Lottery, meaning that when you play you could be donating to us! It’s very quick and easy to sign up (at tandridgelottery.co.uk).  Each ticket costs £1 per week, with a maximum weekly prize of £25,000. For each ticket sold, 50p goes to your chosen good cause, and an extra 10p to other good causes in the community. Plus, there is a special draw on the 30th October, where you could win £1,000 in John Lewis vouchers! Thank you to everyone who has selected Clockwork so far. Fingers crossed for you. 

Finally, we know we say this every time we do an update, but it always bears repeating… Thank you so much to everyone who has donated to, or supported Clockwork in any way in the past few months. We could not achieve anything, or plan for the future, without your amazing support. We will do a proper update thanking those who have raised money for us at the end of the year, but we just wanted to express our appreciation in the meantime.

If you would like to, and feel able to, support Clockwork then there is a link to donate on our website https://www.clockwork.org.uk/

For the latest on what we’re up to, give us a follow on Facebook @clockworkcharity and Instagram @clockworkoxted. And you can always get in touch with us via email enquiries@clockwork.org.uk.