Enhancing the 'emotional health' of the community - The Jewish Chronicle

Relationship problems, bereavement, illness, unemployment, low self-esteem, sexuality and gender - all are issues which can adversely impact on emotional well-being. For more than 35 years, a Jewish counselling service, Raphael, has helped clients from London and the Home Counties deal with these and other "emotional health" matters.

At the outset, its counsellors saw 100 people a month. Now 100 is the weekly figure and Raphael chair, Roberta Coffer, believes that Jews are now more willing to discuss their problems, having traditionally been disinclined to come forward. "People have ideas of what Jews are and what they do. Anything that deviates from that can be frowned upon. So I think that Jews have tended to keep their problems to themselves. You don't tell anybody. You just carry on."

With patrons including Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and former Reform movement chief executive Rabbi Tony Bayfield, Raphael serves the full spectrum of the community, from secular to the strictly Orthodox. Referrals come from shuls, rabbis and social workers.

Counsellors do not offer advice. The aim is to get clients to find their own solutions. "It's totally non-directive," stresses Ms Coffer, who outside of Raphael has a private counselling practice. "We don't say: 'Go here, go there, do this, do that.' The counsellors talk to the clients. During the talking, the counsellors will reflect back to the clients what they say and will help them to look at ways in which they can go forward and deal with their problem.

"And the problem they come with is not necessarily the problem they've got. They might come with anxiety and stress - 'Oh, I can't manage my job' - and over the course of time you find that they might be bullied, they might have an abusive parent, or an abusive child. Or that they suffered that in the past and they've carried it, put it away and not said anything."

Jews have tended to keep their problems to themselves

Raphael's 32 voluntary counsellors work out of homes, synagogue rooms and a centre in Edgware. There are four paid staff. "They are part-time but they work full-time," Ms Coffer explains. "What they are paid and what they do just don't marry up." Given that the annual budget is just £100,000, "how we survive sometimes amazes me".

She is also surprised by how people get to know about it. "We advertise in the JC and hold fundraising functions to raise our profile. The paradox is that clients come for confidential space so we cannot talk about the work [in detail]."

In 2014, 80 cases were closed and 87 new clients were referred to counsellors. Around 40 further assessments were undertaken where people either chose not to proceed or were referred on.

Fifty minute sessions cost from £40, which many clients cannot afford. "But because we don't turn anyone away, if someone cannot afford to pay the full cost, we ask them to at least pay something. If someone has had financial problems - whether the result of a bereavement, because their marriage has broken down, or they have lost their job - the last thing they would want to do is use that vital money. What they really need it for is to look after themselves."

If it had more money Raphael could increase its outreach work - "we do it in a very small way at the moment. Also, we can't expect our counsellors to do a lot of travelling because they are not being paid for it. So we are tied to where we are. We have a small scholarship fund, which we have almost used up, for ongoing training for our counsellors because we believe they should be absolutely up to date.

"Our major undertaking at the moment, which is bringing us into the modern world, is putting all our paperwork and systems on a 'Cloud'. That will really change how we work."

Ms Coffer's first involvement in Raphael dates back 17 years. And its head of clinical services, Sara Cooper, has a link to its origins. Raphael grew out out of Dympna, a Catholic counselling centre led by Father Louis Marteau with the help of Irene Broomfield. Rabbis who went through its training programme included Mrs Cooper's husband, Howard.

raphaeljewishcounselling.org