Frazzled Cafe at Harpenden

Frazzled Cafe at Harpenden

Frazzled Cafe are delighted to continue working with the Harpenden Trust – a partner since January 2022.

We are provide face-to-face meetings for the residents of the Harpenden area.

Harpenden Trust aims is to support its residents by providing confidential and non-judgmental peer support meetings via Frazzled Cafe trained Facilitators, where people who are feeling overwhelmed by the stresses of life can talk openly, connect and feel heard. Speaking is optional, you are very welcome to just listen.

Walking into a new place can be daunting, one of our Frazzled Cafe team will be at the door to welcome you and get you a tea or coffee, you won’t have to walk in alone.

Our face-to-face Frazzled Cafe are a fantastic addition to Harpenden’s wellbeing initiative and are run:

Wednesday: 10.30am-11.30am at the Eric Morcambe Centre, Leyton Road, AL5 2HU. Parking is available at Amenbury Lane Carpark Amenbury Ln, Harpenden AL5 2HS

Monday: 7.45pm-8.45pm at 130a Southdown Road, AL5 1PU. Parking is available in the co-op car park. Entrance is via main doors and up the stairs on Southdown Rd or for lift access via rear doors from the car park

These facilitated meetings are held weekly (excluding Bank Holidays) and expect to see around 12-15 people, and last for an hour. As there are limited spaces per meeting, please sign up via the booking page to attend, and cancel your place either using the booking instructions or by emailing team@frazledcafe.org if you can no longer come so that someone on the waiting list can take your space.

You can see the Harpenden at Frazzled Cafe meetings schedule and book to attend below. If you would like to attend a meeting on a Bank Holiday, please feel free to join an online meeting via the main ‘Meetings’ page.

Frazzled Cafe Guidelines

To help ensure that our meetings run smoothly and in line with the values of Frazzled Cafe, we ask that all participants agree to follow these guidelines:

• To act with integrity. Please respect one another’s confidentiality. Please do not name anyone or discuss anything you may hear in another meeting.

• To treat everyone, including our volunteers, with respect, consideration, and kindness. Any threatening or abusive behaviour will not be tolerated and will result in removal from the meeting.

• To let everyone have a voice. Please respect one another by giving everybody the chance to contribute without interruption and by not dominating or disrupting the conversation. The facilitator may show a white card to signal the end of a speaker’s turn.

• To listen without offering solutions. Please focus your contribution on personal experiences and not political/thematic concepts. When speaking please focus on what resonates with you personally, not on providing answers or solutions to others.

• To be kind to ourselves and each other. This is NOT group therapy and no one should feel under pressure to say anything. We do hope that in hearing others’ experiences you will feel encouraged to share your own. Whether you speak or not, please treat each other in a supportive and considerate way.

• To welcome people from all backgrounds and points of view. We have no religious, political or commercial affiliations and ask that participants refrain from promoting any that they might have.

• To be present. To benefit fully from the session and stay present in the room, please try to avoid distractions from phones or other devices.

FAQs

We are very excited to confirm our partnership with Harpenden Trust to provide face-to-face Frazzled Cafe sessions for residents of Harpenden / AL5 postcode only commencing from January 31st, 2022.

About The Wellbeing Hub

The Trust has partnered with MIND in Mid Herts and the local PCN (the Primary Care Network of our 3 GP surgeries) to create a Wellbeing Hub. Its aim is to support Harpenden residents who have concerns about their mental wellbeing at an early stage before they become unwell and need counselling or cognitive behavioural therapy. 

The Trust is contributing funding and volunteers to the Hub, helping to connect people with existing groups and activities; funding a MIND outreach project in Harpenden and researching ‘gold standard’ initiatives that might be of benefit to our town’s wellbeing. An in-person Frazzled cafe will be a fantastic addition to our town and will run at both the Eric Morecambe Centre and 130a Southdown Road AL5 1PU.

We have fully trained local facilitators to the high Frazzled Cafe standards of our online meetings. There is limited availability for spaces which can be booked following the booking page link below.

https://bookwhen.com/harpendentrustxfrazzledcafe

Harpenden x Frazzled Cafe Facilitated meetings run for one hour and start with a run-through of our guidelines. This is to ensure confidentiality is respected and that there is safe environment for those that would like to share.

Each meeting opens and closes with a short mindfulness exercise. You don’t need to ever have tried mindfulness before, and your participation in these exercises is completely optional.

After the mindfulness exercise, if you would like to speak, all attendees are encouraged to talk about how they are feeling, or to borrow one of Ruby’s expressions, ‘explain what the weather conditions are like in your head’.

Attendees usually speak for 1-2 minutes to ensure everyone that would like to has the opportunity to speak. You can of course speak more than once. Speaking is optional. If you would just like to listen, that is perfectly OK. In all meetings, and in between people speaking, we expect some silences and those are normal.

The Facilitator’s role is to ensure everyone that would like to speak gets a chance to, that the topics of conversation are appropriate for the space and that attendees are both present and respectful of the space and one another.

After the closing mindfulness exercise and the end of the meeting, we recommend attendees take a few minutes to reflect and decompress before returning to their usual routine.

Meetings are held at the Eric Morecambe Centre, located at Leyton Rd, Rothamsted Park, Harpenden AL5 2FR.

Parking is available at: Amenbury Lane Carpark Amenbury Ln, Harpenden AL5 2HS

There is wheelchair accessibility at this location.