50 Years of Number 22: The Place Where I Actually Became a Counsellor

This week, Number 22 Community Counselling Services Maidenhead turned 50.

Fifty years of a small Maidenhead charity quietly doing one of the hardest jobs there is — sitting with people in their worst weeks, keeping that support genuinely accessible through fundraising and low-cost options, and training the next generation of counsellors along the way — all without any of the fanfare that usually goes along with "50 years of service."

I wanted to mark it properly, because Number 22 isn't just a name I recognise. It's where I actually became a counsellor.

Where it started for me

I was interviewed by Damon Hall, who went on to be my mentor for four years — a steady rock and a genuinely sound voice of reason whenever I doubted myself, which, starting out, was often.

Starting my training, I remember how nervous I was to offer these newly learned skills to people who were actually experiencing difficulty and pain. I wanted so badly to help them, but I kept questioning myself.

At the time, that felt like a weakness. I now realise it isn't. Constantly asking yourself whether you're truly doing the best for the client is one of the most important habits a counsellor can have — the client's best interest is the priority, and it should never be taken for granted. I've since learned to hold that questioning alongside genuine confidence, rather than instead of it, but I'm glad I started out unsure. It meant I was paying attention.

One of my first clients became long-term trauma work that continued for three years. It was one of the most valuable lessons of my career, and a client I'll always remember.

What it gave me

Shula Tajima led the agency during my time there — she's recently retired, and is very much enjoying a well-earned break. Her ethos was never really about pounds and pence. It was about believing that everyone who walked through the door was doing their best in genuinely difficult circumstances, and that every counsellor she trained was capable of sitting with someone through their very worst hours. She was encouraging and fierce in equal measure — a combination I've tried to carry into my own work ever since.

Today, I'm a lead counsellor at a local school through Number 22 — which means the same organisation that trained me is still, all these years later, the reason I get to sit with teenagers on some of their hardest days. That's not a small thing to me. It's a straight line from where I started to where I am now, and Number 22 is at both ends of it.

I want to be clear that I'm only a small part of these fifty years — one person, among what must be hundreds of counsellors, volunteers, and staff who've passed through Number 22 since it began. My experience is just one thread in a much bigger story.

Some of my time there was genuinely difficult. I carried cases that stayed with me long after the session ended, including some of the hardest client work of my career. What got me through was being surrounded by supervisors and an agency that cared for me properly when the work was at its heaviest. Every part of it, rewarding and difficult alike, taught me something I still carry into every session I run today.

Fifty years, in a town like this

Community counselling services like Number 22 rarely get much attention. They're not a national campaign or a government strategy — they're a small charity in Maidenhead, run largely by people who believe everyone deserves somewhere to talk, whether or not they can pay for it. Fifty years of that, with almost none of the recognition it deserves, is genuinely remarkable.

Why I'm writing this

Not to sell you anything. If you've ever wondered where the counsellors in your local area actually come from, or who trains the people who end up doing this work in schools, GP surgeries, and community centres near you — it's often exactly this: small, underfunded, decades-old organisations like Number 22, doing the unglamorous groundwork the rest of the mental health system quietly depends on.

If you want to know more about their work or support them - visit https://number22.org/.

Happy 50th, Number 22. Thank you for training me, for the years I spent volunteering with you, and for the work you're still trusting me to do now.

— Kelly