Naomi Plans the Trip of a Lifetime
Successful Lincoln counsellor Naomi Watkins is over the moon after scooping a highly prestigious research award!
Naomi, who is Chief Executive of the phenomenally busy NWCH (Naomi Watkins Counselling Hub) is thrilled to be among 150 privileged people across the UK honoured to receive a Churchill Fellowship.
And she is going to use her grant, from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, to visit Australia and New Zealand to carry out a six-weeks research project into suicide prevention.
Churchill Fellowships offer UK citizens a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel the world and research cutting-edge global solutions to important topical issues and explore innovative ideas and best practice in a practical subject of their choice. The average grant is £6,000.
The Fellowships address contemporary issues, develop knowledge leaders and offer transformative opportunities to outstanding individuals.
“I am excited to be one of just 150 people to receive one of this year’s Fellowships. They attract a lot of competition. I was one of 1,800 applicants, out of which just 250 people were interviewed before the final 150 were chosen,” said Naomi.
“I am planning to travel in May and my grant will cover my flights, accommodation and other essentials.
“I am keen to use my trip to carry out important research into suicide prevention, specifically for children and younger adults in the four-to-30 years old age group. At NWCH we counsel people of all ages, but would like to run special projects designed to help troubled children in this category. I shall be researching ways of spotting signs of a person’s ideation or intention of ending their life by suicide.
“Many people think suicide mainly affects older adults, but there has been a rise in the number of younger people driven to end their own lives by suicide for various reasons. Suicide is the leading cause of death for 5-19yrs old (England ONS, 2018).
“This is a tragedy and, as counsellors, we are determined to do all we can to prevent this from happening,” said Naomi.
“I am looking forward to sharing my research findings with my colleagues at NWCH, where we have a team of 19 counsellors, six support staff and two therapy dogs.”
Naomi added that NWCH, which recorded 803 referrals for help since it started out in 2017 – and currently 500 appointments on its books every week – believes her research findings will also help to inform the Community Interest Company’s Suicide Prevention Conference, which is taking place at The Showroom in Lincoln on September 10 – World Suicide Day.
Founded on 1st April 2017 by Naomi Watkins and Alex Parkin. As co-founders, they felt that there were gaps in the local community for supporting people’s mental health and wellbeing, so decided to create the NW Counselling Hub to aim to fill these gaps. With a vision is to provide a central hub to support children, young people, adults, families and couples within Lincolnshire.
