Important information regarding changes at Stepping Stones

Dear Members, Supporters and Followers

Stepping Stones would like to advise of changes being made to services from October 1^st 2026.

Following on from our public consultation findings, and meetings with our HSCP partners, we have reviewed our services and identified the need for some change. These updates have been shared with members today at our AGM.

Firstly, we noted how valuable our talking therapies, Individual support, Neurodiversity support, and Counselling services are. We shall continue to offer as many appointments as we can, and we invested in increased staffing this year to help meet the increased demand. Please can we remind referring agencies that we are not a trauma service, and that referrals should be appropriate for mild to moderate mental health issues.

There are real benefits in Groups and Peer Support, so we have increased the number of groups to 15 regular groups, that now includes cohorts for ongoing peer led support, neurodiversity groups including online accessible sessions, and our new younger persons group. We also have a new peer support worker.

The other services requested in our survey were walk-in services, access to immediate support and also signposting for support for suicide prevention. In response to this, we are launching our drop-in services from the first week in October. You’ll be able to access on the day support in the Bruce Centre, Dumbarton Joint Hospital Mondays 9-12, at Hope café, Stepping Stones in Clydebank Tuesday 9-12, and at the Support & Information Hub, Vale of Leven Hospital Fridays 9-12.

Overall, everyone seemed to believe that more awareness of mental health issues is needed, so we will also be increasing our offer of Psychoeducation throughout the year. Delivering more training; Healthy Minds, Positive Futures, peer2Peer, Scottish Mental Health First Aid.

This means that we have taken the decision to update our REFERRAL PATHWAYS, from October 1^st 2026 any new referrals will follow a new pathway at assessment, we shall be taking a ‘Groups and Education first’ approach first, before offering 1:1 support. There is an exception, if a new referral has tried another form of support/or service in the past year then they would be open to the 1:1 waitlist if that was the most appropriate service for them.

This means that new referrals may be required to attend education or groups before being able to access 1:1 support. This does not affect anyone who is already on a Stepping Stones wait list.

We are also developing links to enable direct referrals from Stepping Stones to Silvercloud CCBT and the DBI service.

We believe this will help to reduce wait times, and provide access to more support for more people. Please click the link to review the new referral pathway Stepping Stones. Should you have any questions about the pathway please do not hesitate to contact us, if you are unsure about making a referral please do just ask.

Thank you for your support of our organisation, we look forward to delivering this vital work as part of the mental health service provisions for West Dunbartonshire.

Kind Regards

Bronwyn O’Riordan

Chief Officer – Stepping Stones organisation (Mental Health)