Discover how Life & Progress and CiC Wellbeing collaborate to deliver expert mental health and wellbeing support to over 200 UK clients.
From ‘instantly clicking’ to ‘never looking back’, the past five years has seen specialist wellbeing provider Life & Progress embrace the clinical expertise of CiC Wellbeing in support of more than 200 of its UK clients. It’s a symbiotic partnership that Life & Progress says it’s proud to shout from the rooftops, as it expands its intermediary support services to employers, education, and membership bodies nationally.
Offering employee assistance programmes, counselling services, advice lines and whistleblowing services, Life & Progress manage the client relationships with CiC Wellbeing providing the background clinical services. Together they’re supporting people facing personal or work-related problems for organisations of differing sizes and across a huge array of industries. Further education establishments, housing providers, utility companies, local authorities, charities, funeral directors, advocacy services, GP practices, trade associations, care, and IT providers are just some of those supported, alongside Life & Progress’ own team members too.
“We’ve a large and growing client list and that’s due in no small part to working alongside CiC Wellbeing,” explains Dom Grainger, Senior Account Manager at Life & Progress.
“We haven’t looked back since joining forces in 2019. We immediately liked the way CiC Wellbeing worked and communicated, our cultures and values aligned. They very quickly became one of our premium partners, our preferred partner in fact. We know they give our clients, regardless of their size, the service they deserve, and they’ve grown with us as a result.”
Sam Watson, International Relationship Manager at CiC Wellbeing says that person-centred approach is rooted in CiC Wellbeing’s origins, founded by the Westminster Pastoral Foundation and becoming part of the APM Group in 2020:
“The individual is at the heart of everything we do, we genuinely care about the people we serve,” says Sam.
“Some anxieties are generic; others may be seasonal or place based. Our clinical leads are experienced in common stresses and our clinical huddles share themes, clinical approaches, and effective referral routes to ensure our advice is relevant and truly personalised.”
SUPPORT AT EVERY STEP
Life & Progress’ growth has seen CiC Wellbeing handle 2,800 incoming calls from end users in the past 12 months alone. Providing in-the-moment, confidential support, clinically trained experts answer 24/7 incoming lines, offering mental health guidance, legal and financial support, a managers advice line, and whistleblowing hotlines.
Clients may opt for four, six or eight sessions of subsequent face to face or online counselling where required: more than 1,500 sessions have been delivered by CiC Wellbeing counsellors in the past year.
The partnership also sees CiC Wellbeing deliver awareness training to Life & Progress colleagues, the sharing of preventative campaign materials and awareness marketing collateral, monthly feedback reports with participants’ comments, and support to explain the clinical service to new and existing Life & Progress customers.
“CiC Wellbeing has always been extremely accommodating,” adds Dom, “and we don’t shy away from explaining their input to our clients – it’s completely transparent. We will shout from the from the rooftops that CiC Wellbeing is our clinical provider because we’re very proud to work with such a well-rounded, quality service.”
TWO PRIORITIES – SECOND TO NONE
Reflecting on the success of the partnership, Dom’s priorities are clear:
“Transparency is number one for us. If we ask a question, there’s no smoke and mirrors, we get an exact answer. That’s massively important.
“The second thing is definitely efficiency. They’re quick to respond both to us and the callers. For users that’s massively important – you don’t want to wait for calls to be answered or for counselling sessions when you’ve taken the step to seek help.
“In my eyes, CiC Wellbeing are second to none.”