Chat with Charlie one year on

Mental Health Awareness Week in 2019 marks one year since Chat with Charlie expanded to a seven day-a-week service.

Chat with Charlie, an online mental health service based at the offices of Mid and North East Essex Mind, is open to all students who study at the University of Essex. It offers a platform in which students are able to chat anonymously to trained volunteers via an online chatroom.

The service was initially launched as three days a week on the first anniversary of Charlie’s death. The response was phenomenal and showed that there was a need for an anonymous platform where young people can safely talk about their troubles without judgement.

To mark the achievement the Charlie Watkins Foundation (CWF), Mid and North East Essex Mind and the University of Essex has achieved since Chat with Charlie became a seven-day service, CWF has put together the below infographic.

The key statistic on this infographic shows that there was a 66% increase in students accessing the service from December 2018 – January 2019. It is a remarkable achievement showing that the service has been beneficial to students, particularly those suffering with depression and anxiety.

Thanks to the Essex Community Foundation and Mid and North East Essex Mind, CWF is now in a position where the service being rolled out nationwide is becoming a possibility.

It is because of the generous donations on the Charlie Watkins Foundation’s JustGiving page that this been possible. An amazing £25,555 has been raised from friends and family of the foundation.

The foundation also has some amazing volunteers who go out and do some incredible work to raise money. You can see the few of them on the case studies page.

The foundation would like to thank everyone who has been involved since its inception. It’s a huge achievement to have Chat with Charlie as a legacy to Charlie and if just one person is helped, it has all been worth it.