Jigsaw's a free community-based mental health service that looks to offer
direct support one-to-one support with young people who are facing kind of an
issue or issues and want to learn how to manage them a little bit better
We do a lot of research and we engage with our youth advisory panels across the country
and across our hubs to make sure that young people's voices are heard
respected and that they inform our services that we offer to young people in communities
Jigsaw works with young people aged between 12 and 25 who live, work
or go to school or college in an area that there is a Jigsaw.
There are a number of Jigsaws around the country at the minute
and you can check on Jigsaw.ie to see if there's a hub in your area
We try to make it as easy as possible for a young person to access the Jigsaw
service and there's a number of ways that you can do it but generally the
easiest way is to pick up the phone and to call one of the Jigsaw hubs
When you call one of our hubs you'll speak to one of the team who'll ask you maybe a few
very brief questions just to get a sense of whether, you know, Jigsaw would be the
right support this time and if it is and they'll offer a time for you to come
in and meet with one of the team here. It's really important to know that if
someone's under 18 we'll need to speak to a parent or a guardian before they
come in just to make sure their parents or guardians are aware they're coming.
Where the Jigsaw service works really well is at a prevention
and an early intervention time for young people so some of the issues that we could work
with young people for might be if they were facing worries or feeling sad or
down or feeling angry or things like friendship difficulties, difficulties at
home maybe bullying, maybe issues around sexuality or identity
It's really important to know though that we're not a crisis service so if any young person
is feeling maybe at risk to themselves maybe having thoughts of harming
themselves in some way we really would you know encourage them to get support
as soon as possible and get the right help at the right time
If that's happening for someone what we say is there's loads of great
services that support with that but in the first point of call you know talk to
a trusted adult, let them know what's happening; they can support you to go to
your GP or a family doctor who can really kind of support you in that
moment. Iif that's not a possibility for whatever reason your A&E department
of your local hospital can help. And we've all that information on our
website Jigsaw.ie and you just click "Get Help"
So when you come in you'll be greeted by a member of the team who'll encourage you
to sit down the reception area, chill out, you'll be offered tea, coffee, maybe hot
chocolate just so that you can kind of chill out there while you're waiting for
your support worker to come and meet you. A support worker then will invite you
into one of the one of the individual session rooms where you can just
sit back, kind of relax, you'll be given time to kind of get settled in
particularly if it's your first time. If it's your first time your support worker
will talk you through the work we do in Jigsaw, talk to you about
issues like consent and confidentiality so you're really clear about what coming
to Jigsaw involves and you know what happens with your information.
Throughout the discussion then they'll be just really talking through you know what's
going on for them and trying to see if Jigsaw might be a service that might be
able to help at that time. Towards the end of the session the young person and
the person in Jigsaw will really try and come up with a plan of where might be
the best help for the young person. If it is Jigsaw we would really recommend
then that the young person tries to set a goal for what might help them with the
difficulty that they're facing. If this is the case they would usually be up to
between one and six sessions and that the young person would come back to Jigsaw
And what we really try to do is to see if there's anything that can help [that] young person to meet their goal.
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