Band of Builders has launched a free counselling service for trades including heating engineers and plumbers to tackle a “construction industry mental health crisis”.
Its inaugural Big Brew fundraising campaign raised enough cash to run the service for the next two years.
Band of Builders is reaching out to tradespeople who are experiencing anxiety, depression, loneliness, relationship issues, self-harm, feeling suicidal or any other trauma to encourage them to take the all-important first step of seeking help, it said.
Tradespeople can self-refer themselves through the charity’s website and receive confidential counselling in person – dependent on location – or otherwise by phone or online via a video call service such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom.
Band of Builders – a registered charity helping members of the UK construction industry battling illness or – is also funding the training of 150 mental health awareness courses designed primarily for builders merchants staff across the UK.
Peter Cape, Big Brew lead at Band of Builders, said: “Band of Builders has a very active community of nearly 50,000 tradespeople across the UK and they share so many heartbreaking stories of people who are struggling, or facing some very serious situations.
“We hope that our new counselling service can be a real lifeline for people who think they have nowhere else to turn.
“Whilst there are some incredible organisations out there doing fantastic work to support people across the spectrum of mental health and wellbeing, we hope that the fact we’re a charity for builders, run by builders, might make it ever so slightly easier for people in crisis to reach out to us.”
The counselling service can be accessed from https://bandofbuilders.org/pages/apply-for-help and clicking the Wellbeing Service where there is more information about the service and self-referral form. This is also signposting for people in immediate crisis.
Big Brew will also be running again this October and BoB has set its sights on doubling the amount of events across the UK, so it can fund even more mental health provision for the construction industry.