About us

HUGS@Home started as a research project in January 2022, funded by Movember and the Distinguished Gentleman's Ride, with the aim of training families and friends of first responders how to;

1) Recognise stress in their loved one; 

2) Begin a helpful conversation using basic psychological first aid techniques; 

3) Prioritise self-care while providing social support to others.  

Along with a wonderful co-design team in 2022, we developed an innovative one-day in-person HUGS training course to teach practical psychological first aid skills to frontline personnel, their families, friends and organisations.  Since 2023, we've rolled this training out across multiple counties in Ireland and one location in the UK. As a result, we've seen increased confidence in starting helpful conversations, enhanced social support, improved help-seeking, maintenance of resilience and increases in post-traumatic growth.

Following the success of the research project, we decided to continue providing the service on a not-for-profit basis and incorporated HUGS as a profit with purpose CLG, trading as HUGS Community.  As an early-stage pipeline spin-out company from RCSI, we now offer training to the wider first responder community- full time and volunteer responders, peer support teams, families and friends, mental health professionals and others supporting frontline work.