Lottery cash for charity which helped people affected by Manchester attack
A CHARITY established by a rabbi which provided counselling in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bomb attack has won a Lottery grant to take its work into schools.
Heads Up CIO was set up by Rabbi Dov Ben-Yaacov Kurtzman, originally from Glasgow, to bring Israeli therapeutic techniques to the treatment of trauma victims in the UK.
Arriving here in late 2016 after more than 30 years in Israel, Rabbi Kurtzman saw “there was going to be a need
— there had been a lot of terrorist attacks in Europe”. He also identified a vacuum generally in mental health services in the UK. In Manchester, the charity provided emergency psychological first-aid at a pop-up centre, training 90 therapists and counsellors and offering a “safe space” to anyone affected by their experience of the bombing. Within a week, he also sent a team to help out in the immediate aftermath of the London Bridge attack and later trained volunteers to deal with those impacted by the Grenfell fire. One of the charity’s aims is to “teach as many people as possible simple techniques that will help them come out of psychological shock”. Professionals such as ambulance drivers, policemen and firemen who deal with emergency incidents can sometimes go into shock, he explained.
“Normally you would evacuate your colleague and send them to hospital.” But through the Israeli techniques, a colleague could give peer-to-peer treatment on the spot, enabling the person “to come out of shock and continue with their work”.
The £10,000 grant will allow Heads Up to “go into schools and communities to show how to build up psychological self-resilience to stress or trauma”.
Rabbi Kurtzman will also be spreading awareness of the charity’s methods at a series of seminars. The first, in London on June 6, has been organised by Stanmore-based therapist Carole Golten, who was a Grenfell volunteer.
Also speaking will be Professor Yori Gidron, another Israeli expert in trauma therapy who helped at the pop-up centre last year.