MANCHESTER, England, October 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Kooth, the pioneering advice and support service for 11-25 year olds, received the Local Government IT Excellence Award for Service Transformation at the Society of Information Technology Management (Socitm) Annual Conference last week in Newport.
The Kooth service helps vulnerable young people deal with a wide range of problems from alcohol and drug misuse through to bullying and depression. The free, confidential and anonymous service is staffed by a team of specially trained counsellors and advice workers, who also fully moderate the site checking the suitability of all the user-created content to make sure Kooth.com remains a safe site for young people to use.
The Local Government IT Excellence awards are the result of collaboration between Intellect, Socitm and SOLACE. Now in their 13th year, they seek to highlight and reward IT systems or processes within local government which improve the efficiency and delivery of services within local communities.
Elaine Bousfield, Kooth Service Director, said: We are extremely proud of Kooth and how it has broken the stigma for the young people we have worked with surrounding mental and emotional health. This award strengthens our desire for Kooth.com to one day be a national service so that young people from all over the UK can access advice and counselling from the medium they are growing up with which is the Internet.
Councillor Mark Weldon, Executive Member for Children Young People, at Stockport Council, said: Kooth.com continues to go from strength to strength. This innovative public/private partnership rightly receives the national accolades for the difference it makes to young people when they need advice and support.
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About Kooth.com
Kooth.com solves a significant problem for vulnerable young people, local authorities and Primary Care Trusts. The pioneering web-based counselling service provides young people with a free, confidential, safe, always accessible and, above all, anonymous and non-threatening way of asking for help when they first need it. It enables local authorities to intervene early with regard to difficult emotional and mental health problems being encountered by at risk young people.
Kooth was originally funded by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Communities and Local Government) as an 'Invest To Save' initiative. The first local authority in the UK to offer the service to its local population was Stockport Council in March 2004 and it now operates in another eight areas, namely, Cheshire, St Helens, Wirral, Wigan, Warrington, Knowsley, Warwickshire and, most recently, Blaenau Gwent.
The URL for the Kooth service is http://www.kooth.com and more information about Kooth can be found at http://www.kooth.info. Kooth is a public/private partnership between Xenzone Limited and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council.
Contact: Elaine Bousfield, Kooth Service Director T: +44(0)845-330-7090
Contact: Elaine Bousfield, Kooth Service Director, T: +44(0)845-330-7090, M: +44(0)7974-190136, E: elaine@xenzone.com
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