Celebrating 15 years of TALKWORKS

This year TALKWORKS celebrates its 15^th anniversary. Since launching in 2009, the free-to-access NHS Talking Therapies service (formerly known as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, IAPT),  has significantly grown in size. It now has more than 300 members of staff who provide mental health and wellbeing support to adults across Devon.

TALKWORKS helps adults who are struggling with a mild to moderate common mental health problems, including low mood, anxiety, stress and sleep difficulties. Last year alone, TALKWORKS helped over 11,000 people complete treatment, and has a clinical improvement rate of 70% - placing it in the top 10% of services across the country for helping people to recover.

Jonny Wilkins, Head of Service, said: “Everyone who works for TALKWORKS, and all those who have contributed to our development over the past 15 years, should be very proud of the service we provide to our community. To be one of the best performing services in the country is testament to the hard work, passion and commitment of our teams, and I am very grateful to work with such dedicated colleagues, who undertake their work with great skill and compassion every day.”

Following COVID-19, TALKWORKS continues to offer therapy remotely, as well as face-to-face, to be more accessible to service users. Remote therapy can take place over the phone or by video call, while face-to-face appointments are available at one of TALKWORKS bases across Devon. Online self-help is also available day or night, seven days a week, via a laptop or smartphone.

Paul, who completed treatment with TALKWORKS for his chronic pain and low mood, said: “I am now much better equipped to recognise when I am becoming overwhelmed and act to steer myself back to a better place. I could not have done this without the help of the people at TALKWORKS and I am very grateful for their guidance in allowing me to develop a better awareness and understanding of the reasons I feel low. You may feel that things can’t get better, but with the right help I have found that they can, and they do!"

In 2021, TALKWORKS developed prolonged grief disorder therapy (PGDT) as a response to preventing issues that may arise as a result of COVID-19. TALKWORKS became the only NHS Talking Therapies service in the country to offer this intervention at this time. The care pathway for PGDT was created in collaboration with the University of Exeter’s AccEPT clinic. Over time, this pathway has developed and more than 150 people have now been treated by TALKWORKS for prolonged grief. The service has over twenty five high-intensity therapists trained in PGDT, four of who are PGDT supervisors. The TALKWORKS team conducted a service evaluation using data from 80 patients who had completed treatment which revealed the service had a 72% recovery rate for PGDT, with an impressive 82% achieving reliable improvement, and 68% reaching reliable recovery.

Alongside clinical treatment, TALKWORKS has further expanded its employment support offer by recently welcoming a number of employment advisors into the service. The employment support team work with service users to decide what’s most helpful for their overall wellbeing so that they can find, remain in or get back to work. Employment support is now available to TALKWORKS service users across the whole of Devon (outside Plymouth).

In the last twelve months, TALKWORKS has also welcomed volunteers into the service who have been able to help with service development and patient experience. Simon Blasby Martinez, Clinical Team Lead and founder of the volunteer project, said: “It’s been really exciting to see the project develop so rapidly over its first year. We’ve developed a volunteer training programme, and our volunteers, some of whom are also experts by experience, have contributed to a wide variety of tasks. These include attending marketing events, providing a lived experience perspective to the development of materials and supporting staff with clinical work.”

Learn more about TALKWORKS and the range of treatment and support the service can offer on its website, or by calling the team on 0300 555 3344 (available Monday to Friday, 9am–4:45pm). You can self-refer to the service, free of charge, without needing a referral from a GP via the online self-referral form or by calling the team on the number above.

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