Children’s mental health week and some helpful resources

Children’s mental health week and some helpful resources

Children’s mental health week and some helpful resourcesChildren’s mental health week has been running from 1-7 February 2021

As the consequences of the pandemic and lockdown continue there has never been a more important time to focus on the mental health and wellbeing of our children.

Many children are facing the consequences of school closure, being educated from home, isolation or tragically perhaps bereavement. Not to mention the knock on effect of anxiety and stress they will no doubt be picking up from the media and perhaps those adults who are looking after them.

BACP has drawn together a fantastic collection of resources for anyone with an interest in children’s mental health and we have included a link so you can check it out here. There’s helpful tips for lockdown family life, blogs from school counsellors and young people talking about their mental health.

Please don’t hesitate to contact Rainbow for more information, or support for you or your child, as recovery is most definitely possible!

Related topic: Children’s Mental Health Week Feb 2021 website >

Uncertain times for children and young people

Uncertain times for children and young people

There are many reasons for children and young people to be feeling uncertain and anxious at the moment.

Uncertain times for children and young peopleThe routine of school has been disrupted, exam results have caused chaos for school leavers and access to regular support may have been interrupted or delayed. Not to mention the challenge of learning to learn from home without the support of teachers in the same way. And now the sudden return to school following a very long break away.

Counselling can help children and young people through these challenging times and many counsellors have risen to the challenge of offering counselling remotely, whether by video, phone and even text message. Of course face-to-face counselling has had to pause in many settings whilst lockdown measures have been in place.

For more detailed information please see our Counselling for Children and Young People page >

A couple of articles by BACP highlight the challenges children and young people are facing at this time and ways in which counsellors are rising to meet these challenges.

Anticipating a rise in demand for school counselling after Covid-19 closures >

Stressed brains can’t learn >

Specialist Counselling for Children and Young People

Specialist Counselling for Children and Young People

We are often asked at Rainbow if we can help children or young people and so this week we wanted to highlight this service in particular.

Schools qualified counsellors for young peopleChildren and young people may have particular needs that may be different to adults coming to counselling. Some common themes that may crop up in this work include anxiety, anger, fear, bereavement, school problems, self harm, relationships and self esteem to name a few.

Our children’s and young people’s counsellors offer a service tailored specifically to each child or young person. Often this can involve creative methods such as sand tray work or art, as these have been demonstrated to be of particular help to this group, perhaps when talking and words feel too hard to express. But of course each person is unique and your child would be empowered to work in a way that they feel most comfortable with. We have particular experience in the Rainbow team with ways of working with children/young people on the autistic spectrum, and also looked-after children.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch to find out more about what we can offer in this area. Our counsellors working with children/young people – Rachael, Evelyn and Helen – would be only too happy to talk through how they might be able to help.

For more info please visit our: Counselling for Children and Young People Service page >

Specialist Counselling for Children and Young People

Should qualified counsellors be available in secondary schools?

Labour pledges support for young people by offering qualified counsellors in schools

Schools qualified counsellors for young peopleAs part of its manifesto for General Election 2019 the Labour Party has committed to fund a qualified counsellor in every secondary school.

This would provide vital support for young people in terms of early intervention and quicker identification of psychological issues.

The £845m ‘Healthy Young Minds’ programme would fund a total of 3500 counsellors on site in schools.

British Association of Counselling and Phsycopherapy BACP logoMartin Bell, deputy Head of Policy and Public Affairs at BACP said: “School counselling is often the only opportunity young people have to access vital support, because they face long waits for NHS services or do not meet the threshold for that care.”

Check out BACP’s full article on this topic.