One of my voluntary roles is as a trustee of The Haven, a charity that offers affordable counselling in my local area and provides placements for trainee counsellors. It has been running under that name for 25 years and, yesterday, we held a service to mark that at the Loughborough URC church, where our Loughborough activity is based.

Normally I contribute IT and information security expertise but what I brought to yesterday’s event was my guitar and a few songs slotted in throughout the service. The URC church doesn’t seem set up for ‘worship band’ music but I brought enough gear to make me self-sufficient. Over the last year, my guitar playing has been on the back burner as I’ve mainly been on bass or other instruments in various settings but there was a bit of time to practise in advance and get it up to scratch.

It is hard to say what counselling will look like in another 25 years time. Even over the time I have been involved, it has shifted, with a lot more being done online, both for setting up new clients and even conducting a certain proportion of the counselling sessions. Both of those changes were driven, in part, by COVID-19 which forced people to explore what communications technology could do; some have found it preferable to continue that way. I do hope though that The Haven, or something descended from it in the same vein, continues to offer affordable and compassionate support to those who need it.