Chai Cancer Care has expanded its counselling service for clients who don’t have English as a first language.
The charity, which stressed the importance of being able to offer counselling in a client’s mother tongue, has invested in a bigger team of Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and French-speaking therapists.
Louise Hager MBE, chairman of Chai, said: “Counselling is a significant part of the work we do, and it’s important that clients are able to express themselves in their native language, rather than having to search for the right words in a second or third language that may not reflect how they really feel. Many also tell us they feel more comfortable speaking to someone who understands their cultural background, as well as their language.”
Israel-born Ori (not his real name), in his 40s, was supported by Chai after his wife died of cancer. He said: “My therapist changed my life. I needed someone who understood my background, not just the language, but my mentality, my Israeli upbringing.
“Being able to speak in Hebrew made therapy so much easier. I speak it every day, so it was natural. Therapy was in my mother tongue, and that made all the difference.”
Stamford Hill-based Mayer Lindner, a psychotherapist who has been working with Chai clients for more than two years, speaks fluent Yiddish and English. He said: “People from the Charedi and Chasidic communities often share very specific realities, including strong communal life, religious and spiritual involvement, and large families. When the person supporting them truly understands this, clients do not need to explain their entire world before they can begin to talk about their experience and what they are going through.
Lindner said that when people were forced to switch between languages, it put up a communication barrier, “as certain words do not carry the same meaning or emotional weight”.
Dayan Kupperman, the senior rabbi of Etz Chaim Synagogue in Leeds, counsels ten per cent of his clients in Hebrew or Russian.
A trained psychotherapist, Kupperman has been working with Chai for the past 13 years, providing both in-person and remote support. He said: “It is significant that a person can have a possibility to be counselled in their mother tongue at Chai. There are words in Hebrew that don’t have English equivalents, and there are words in English that don’t have Hebrew equivalents, and the same with Russian.
“At Chai, counsellors and psychotherapists try to provide those people with the kind of listening that they don’t get in other places.”
The expansion of Chai’s non-English-speaking counselling service reflects the growth in demand, which has seen a ten per cent jump since pre-Covid. Between November 2024 and October 2025, Chai delivered 11,650 individual counselling sessions.
Hager said: “At Chai, clear, supportive and sensitive communication has always been key to how we support clients affected by a diagnosis. Expanding our team of native-language counsellors is a natural extension of that approach.”
For more information on Chai’s counselling and its other services, go to: chaicancercare.org or click here
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