A guiding hand for seafarers and their families

A feature sponsored by Seafarer Support

October 12, 2015 in Community Care

Seafarer Support is a free, confidential referral service for serving and former seafarers and their families in times of need.

Sometimes we need a little help in steering a course through life’s problems and Seafarer Support can guide families to sources of help.

As the single point of contact for the UK maritime charity sector, working with nearly 150 charities and organisations, Seafarer Support can help individuals and professionals avoid the effort and stress of approaching numerous charities and organisations by directing people to the most appropriate sources of help.

Take, for example, this recent enquiry we received:

Seafarer Support was contacted by a woman whose marriage was in great difficulty and felt that this was largely due to post-traumatic stress that her husband was suffering from as a result of deploying to Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq three times whilst serving in the Royal Navy.

She had already contacted 40 organisations as well as her GP and local MP, all to no avail. They had offered to treat her husband with specialist help for the post-traumatic stress, but not both of them as a couple.

Seafarer Support was able to put her directly in touch with a consultant psychiatric outreach worker for a telephone referral in the first instance. The couple are now in the process of obtaining the specialist help they wanted and Seafarer Support is keen to follow the couple’s progress.

The woman in question said “I cannot thank you enough for your help, I wish finding help were somewhat easier.”

So, if you know of a serving or former Merchant Navy, Royal Navy, Royal Marines or fishing fleet seafarer or family member who is looking for support, get in touch with our friendly team today.

We aim to respond to all enquiries within three working days, our staff will ask a few questions about the help you are looking for. We work with each individual to see if there are suitable sources of help to meet their needs. If necessary, we can arrange for a trained caseworker to visit a family home.

You can call our Freephone helpline on 0800 121 4765 or visit our website www.seafarersupport.org where you can use our Maritime Charities Welfare Guide to help guide you to the charities and organisations best suited to help.