Supporting Children & Young People
Being a young person has never been harder than it is today. The impact of Covid-19 has been far-reaching and has left a mark on many of us, children and adults alike, but particularly younger people whose education, home and social life were so affected.
At the same time, many young people benefited tremendously from being away from the pressures of school, only now to have to return to it, and that can be scary and anxiety-inducing.
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Pressures from social media has never been higher, with record numbers of young people experiencing issues with anxiety, depression, anger, eating, substance abuse and family conflict.
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We're here to help.
Our Approach
Talking about our problems can be hard for everyone, especially young people, and it can be difficult to know what to say or where to start. Many of our therapists have specialist backgrounds in working with younger people, and can help provide a safe space for our clients to open up and talk when they're ready to do so.
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Gaining our client's trust is critical, and a young client should always be able to choose whether they go to therapy, or who they work with. Often parents perceive their child as having problems and needing to talk to someone, but the young person might not be quite ready to. We try to balance helping families with also empowering young people to make decisions for themselves.
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Confidentiality is really important when we work with young people. Even if a parent is paying for therapy, we will never tell a parent what their child has said in therapy unless there is a very serious safeguarding risk. This can be difficult for parents to understand sometimes, but it's really important that younger clients feel that it is there space where they can talk about whatever they want to.
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If a safeguarding concern does come up, we will always work with the young person first to see what they would like to do about it. Going straight to parents or the authorities might feel like a bad option to them, so we work with the young person to reduce risks and encourage them to tell someone about it when they're ready to do so.
