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Healing Experience of Loss and Trauma Service

How our service can help you

Helix is a specialist therapeutic service for women and birthing people who live in Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham or Southwark and who are experiencing emotional distress, or mental health difficulties following a perinatal loss.

Who is the service for?

We work with people who have experienced:

  • Pregnancy loss (this may include loss associated with fertility treatment, miscarriage that has occurred at any stage, or terminations including termination of pregnancy for foetal anomaly)
  • A stillbirth or death of a baby

The service is open to anyone who is currently experiencing emotional distress or mental health difficulties related to a perinatal loss, regardless of how long ago the loss happened. This may include pregnancy after loss.

We recommend that people are not referred within the first 4 weeks of a loss, to allow your body and mind time to recover and for us to intervene at the right time.

We are only able to offer a service to residents of Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark.

Please note: Currently, we are accepting referrals from Southwark, Lambeth, Lewisham and Croydon ONLY.

How the service works

The Helix service is made up of psychologists, psychological therapists, midwives and peer support workers. Our aim is to improve mental health and wellbeing for people and their family.

Support may include:

  • Evidence-based psychological therapy, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR)
  • Peer support either within the service or in the community
  • Liaising with other professionals who are providing care to the person
  • Including partners and family members in care when this is helpful
  • Suggesting services that partners or family members can access for individual therapy or other support

We can arrange an interpreter if this is needed.

We encourage people to bring a family member or friend along to the initial or future appointments if helpful.

  • Service Borough Covers: Croydon, Lambeth, Lewisham, Southwark Treatment type: Psychological therapies

  • Contact the service

    Site Location: Maudsley Hospital Known As: Helix service Email: Helixreferrals@slam.nhs.uk

    • Other essential information

  • Conditions: pregnancy loss, stillbirth

Our team

Meet the Team

Kyla Vaillancourt – Principal Clinical Psychologist & Joint Clinical Lead

Danielle Jackson – Principal Clinical Psychologist & Joint Clinical Lead

Louise Dougal – Senior CBT Therapist

Sarah Emmerson – Senior Counselling Psychologist

Laura Bridle – Senior Specialist Midwife

Toyin Adeyinka – Expert by Experience

Carmen Li – Assistant Psychologist

Laura Hemmings – Team Administrator

Veronica Finn – Expert by Experience

Jo Doumouchtsi - Senior Midwife

Referrals

Helix accepts referrals from any health professional (e.g., GP, midwife, health visitor other mental health service)

  • Referrals are made using our electronic referral form below or DXS
  • Please feel free to contact the service for advice if you are unsure if Helix is the right service.
  • If you are having any problem with the online referral form, please email helixreferrals@slam.nhs.uk to alert us and so we can support you.
  • If you have not been contacted by the Helix Service in twi weeks of submitting your referral, please email HelixReferrals@slam.nhs.uk

What happens once we receive a referral?

  • We may get in contact with the referred person or the person who made the referral to get more information if this is needed
  • If we think Helix can help, we will arrange to meet the person within 4 weeks to schedule an initial appointment.
  • If we don’t think that Helix is the right service, we will make recommendations of other services that can help.
  • We aim to meet people for an initial appointment at a time and place which is convenient for them (this might be at one of our rooms in the community, hospital, at home or virtually). This appointment can last up to 90 minutes.
  • At the end of the appointment, we will discuss support / therapy options with the person and agree a plan.

If you have not been contacted by the Helix Service within a week of submitting your referral, please email HelixReferrals@slam.nhs.uk

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