User:ACCESSNetherlands/sandbox

ACCESS is a not-for-profit organisation that has been supporting the international community in the Netherlands for almost 30 years. It is run entirely by a team of highly skilled, motivated and professional volunteers who are either current expats or have been in the past.

ACCESS was created in 1985 out of concern for the mental well-being of the international community of The Hague and to promote the emotional and social well-being for English-speaking people in the Netherlands. Working from the American School of The Hague, Patrick Foley, an American School Counsellor became aware of a problem. There was a preponderance of family conflicts, marital problems, substance abuse, anxiety, and depression in English-speaking house-holds, which due to cultural and language differences were going unassisted.

With support from the broader English speaking community at the time and a subsidy from the US Department of Health, a Community Mental Health Needs Assessment was undertaken. It recommended the establishment of a network of "qualified and competent" English-speaking expatriate psychologists; developing educational and professional criteria for network membership; and creating easier access to the network via a "telephone contact point" with an on-call counsellor. The CSN (Counsellor Service Network) continues to serve these same needs 30 years on and is the very core of ACCESS.

Building on these initial ideas, ACCESS has, through its volunteer network continued to support the needs of the community in a preventive manner, by not only offering volunteering opportunities to many, but by adding to their services educational, training, self-help and self-improvement courses and information, in English and tailored to the needs of an expatriate community.

More information on the history of ACCESS can be found here