What is School Counselling?

School Counselling offers a confidential space for children to come and explore their thoughts and feelings about worries they might have. These are often worries that make children feel sad, scared, angry or upset. These feelings can affect children’s confidence, concentration and resilience to deal with everyday activities like coming to school, learning, enjoying playing and making friends.

When a child is in school counselling, they will work with a qualified counsellor or therapist who has been trained to work with children in school. This might be through Art or Play or both. This is because play and creativity are vital to children’s development and can help them to communicate how they feel in a way that is comfortable for them.

While children are in counselling their allocated counsellor/therapist works closely with the children’s parents and teachers to help them to put in place strategies that can make a positive difference to the child’s mental and emotional wellbeing.

Why children might be referred

Here at Shoreditch Park children are referred for many reasons. They have included children feeling sad about something that has happened or changed in their life such as bereavements or parents separating. A child could be struggling with their school work and this is making them feel angry, frustrated and not very confident in their abilities. We also work with children who might be finding it hard to make friends and this is causing them to feel lonely and left out.

Children are referred by teachers/senior staff members who can see they might benefit from the support and parents.

What happens once my child is referred?

Someone in the counselling service will get in contact with you to arrange to meet you so we can learn more about you and your child. We will also ask you what you would like your child to achieve by working with the service. Some of the things parents have said are ‘for my child to feel happy in school’, ‘I really want my child to be more resilient and not get so angry’, ‘I want help to know why my child is struggling to listen and concentrate’.

How long will my child need counselling for?

Counselling/therapy can be short term or for 1 year. This depends on what difficulties your child is experiencing and how long it takes for them to feel comfortable to talk about their feelings. Some children will know what they want to work on straight away and others might need a bit longer to share their feelings with their counsellor/therapist.

Meet our School Counsellor

This is Natasha Mattos She has been working with Shoreditch Park for many years and has really enjoyed having the opportunity to support the children refereed to express their thoughts and feelings and work through any difficulties they have been experiencing.