Touchstone Enabling Communities

Touchstone – inspiring communities, transforming lives

Background to Touchstone

With 30 years experience of working with communities in Leeds, Touchstone is a charity dedicated to making a difference to the lives of people, working together with them to improve their wellbeing.

Originally set up by the local community in Beeston to ensure that the mental health needs of the local population were being met, it has now grown to offering multiple services throughout Leeds and West Yorkshire, many of which are focused on meeting the needs of BME people.

Values of Touchstone

Touchstone exists for its service users and is committed at all levels of it’s work to be led by the inclusion and empowerment of service users. All of Touchstone’s services reflectits values:

To promote the well-being and recovery of service users

To ensure quality is at the heart of all we do

To have integrity at all times

To make independence possible

To be person-centred, valuing difference and celebrating diversity

To give respect and ensure dignity for all

What do we offer?

Touchstone offers multiple mental health and wellbeing services around West Yorkshire. Within the field of SDS we have extensive experience of:

Enabling people to improve their mental health and wellbeing
Supporting people to recover
Improving confidence and reducing isolation
Listening to what people say they want to do in life, and assisting them to achieve it.

Touchstone’s staff

Touchstone’s staff are it’s greatest asset. Our workforce reflects the communities that we work in, male and female workers, BME workers who speak over 20 different languages, all working with people throughout Leeds and beyond.

All our staff are highly professional and experienced in their field from: mental health, working with BME people, housing, benefits and entitlements, employment and training, older people, younger people, drugs and alcohol and physical health.

Touchstone is committed to supporting and developing staff. We ensure that all staff receive 1:1 support, a high level of ongoing training and development and support from high quality leadership.

Working with Touchstone

When working with Touchstone, you will receive a highly professional service from all staff that you engage with. With a dedicated point of contact to work with we will listen to your needs and develop a high quality support package in conjunction with yourself and the client.

Quality at Touchstone

Using accredited monitoring tools we will give you regular feedback and attend review meetings to keep you updated about how your client is progressing. We can measure the outcomes of the work we do through a number of methods depending on the service user's, carers and/or professionals choice. We most commonly use: the Strengths Assessment – to identify the achievements, strengths and assets of the service user and the Outcome Star and support plan – to indentify areas for change and set goals to achieve change. This enables all parties to be aware of progress and feeds into the regular reviews.

Feedback from SDS service users

Touchstone has an exemplary track record in enabling people with mental health problems with personal budgets to achieve outcomes. 100% of the current SDS service users report that Touchstone’ support has enabled them to use their time more meaningfully, and 100% report that Touchstone’s support has enabled them to better care for themselves.

Recent Quality standards and awards achieved

About to be named as one of the Times “Top 100 charity sector employers to work for” in 2013

Named “Best Partner” by Leeds Adult Social Care in 2011

Highly Commended in the national Charity Awards 2010 for service user involvement in leadership and management.

Add a quote from a partner organisation and service user

Getting in touch