Frequently Asked Questions

Let’s Keep Talking is a free, open-access telephone therapy service offering solution-focused conversations to anyone who wants them.

Let’s Keep Talking is now set up as a Community Interest Company in its own right, having started life as a project that was set up and run by Dr Suzi Curtis (director of Let’s Keep Talking) while she was working within another local organisation.

The main personnel involved in running Let’s Keep Talking on a day-to-day basis are Suzi, who is a Clinical Psychologist, and Karen Moss, qualified person-centred counsellor. Both are also accredited solution-focused practitioners with a wealth of experience in using this approach with a range of different clients.

Let’s Keep Talking’s activities are mostly funded through a mixture of private donations, a local subscription-based lottery and grants, though a small amount of our funding comes from the (small) profits we make on any private or commercial work that we do.
If you would like to know how to support or donate to Let’s Keep Talking please follow this link.

If you are 18 or over and looking for ‘talking therapy” to help you move towards a better future, to help you cope with feelings of sadness, loneliness or worry, or to manage a difficult life situation, Let’s Keep Talking is the service for you.

Yes. Let’s Keep Talking offers talking therapy to anyone wanting things to be better in their lives, including things that are sometimes classed as ‘mental health problems’. However,  if you are looking for a psychiatric or psychological assessment, diagnosis, formulation or for medication, you may be better off asking your GP for a referral to an NHS mental health service. You are, of course, welcome to use Let’s Keep Talking in addition to any other mental health or medical support you are getting from other services. Our rule is that, if you want to talk to us, we will try to help!

Yes, you can refer yourself. There are several ways to contact the service. Follow the links on the website and complete the referrals form. Or you can ring free of charge on 0800 090 2470, text us on 07889 718828 or email suzi@letskeeptalking.co.uk.

Yes, you can refer a friend. However, you need to have your friend’s consent to do this.

A member of our team will contact you, by text, phone or email (depending on how you contacted us) to ask about your preferences for times and days of calls.  We will then find a caller who is available at a time to suit you and arrange your first call with them.  The Let’s Keep Talking caller will then call you at this prearranged time and date.

It’s up to you!  At the end of your first call, your caller will ask you if you’d like to book another call with them or leave it open for you to get in touch with us again if you’d like another call at some stage in the future.

We aim to ensure that people using the service are able to stick with the same caller, if this is their wish, and most people do want to do this. In certain circumstances, we may need to allocate you to a different caller – for example,  if the caller you started with cannot offer calls at times that fit with your preferences, or if you feel that you’d prefer to speak with someone different.

We will usually contact you within 24 hours to find out when you’d like to have your Let’s Keep Talking calls, and your first call will usually be arranged within 2 weeks of this date.

Although we are able to fix up first calls with our therapists very quickly (usually within 2 weeks), Let’s Keep Talking is not currently set up to offer instant support to people who are in crisis, feeling suicidal or desperate. If you need to speak to someone urgently we recommend that you contact Samaritans, who offer instant conversations on a 24-hour basis; call them on 116 123 or other ways to contact them can be found on their website here.

Each call will last between 10 minutes and an hour,  depending on your needs and preferences .. Call length can vary and can be decided upon with your Let’s Keep Talking caller  on a session-by-session basis.

This is something that can be decided between you and your Let’s Keep Talking caller, on an ongoing basis. We do not set any rules or limits to this in advance as we like to be able to offer you calls as often as you’d like to have them.  Of course, we do not have limited time and resources so we may not always be able to do this. Your caller will keep you informed of their availability on an ongoing basis.

The calls will be focused on you, and their exact content will depend on what you’d like to get from talking to us and what you tell us about what is going on in your life at the moment. The callers will all be trained in solution-focused conversations and so they will ask you questions intended to be useful to you in moving closer to the life you want for yourself.  Of course, it is entirely up to you what you choose to tell them and you will never be forced to speak about something you don’t wish to.

Not unless you want to. Our callers won’t be asking for information about your past, your difficulties or your problems, but you are very welcome to tell your caller anything you want to if this seems helpful to you. We know that some people benefit from sharing their ‘story’ with someone impartial, perhaps because they haven’t been able to in the past, for whatever reason. At the same time, we often see people who have been to many different services or therapists and had to tell their story over and over again without this necessarily leading to any useful outcome for them, so we are always keen to avoid going over problems without a good reason. We consider that our clients wanting to tell their stories to be the best reason of all to do this…in fact, it is probably the only valid reason!

All the practitioners from Let’s Keep Talking are trained in having solution-focused conversations. For more details about this approach and how it works, please follow this link. Many of our callers also have training and qualifications in a range of other approaches including person-centred counselling, mindfulness, cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and trauma therapy, and they may draw upon ideas from these approaches in their conversations with you.

In the first instance please raise any concerns with your practitioner to see if the situation can be resolved quickly. If you need to continue with your complaint then please contact the service via email (suzi@letskeeptalking.co.uk) and we will listen to your concerns and work with you to find a resolution.

Let’s Keep Talking is a charitable venture run under the aegis of the Working Conversations Group Community Interest Company.  Its activities are funded through a mixture of private donations, a local subscription-based lottery and profits from the Working Conversations Group’s commercial activities. If you would like more information about the people who run and work for Let’s Keep Talking, please follow this link. If you would like to know how to support or donate to Let’s Keep Talking please follow this link.

We have a sizeable group of volunteers who work as Let’s Keep Talking callers and we are always looking to increase this pool! Please follow this link to find out more about what volunteering for us entails, and how to get started.