SEMH-Social Emotional Mental Health

What is Social and Emotional Mental Health?

Early support for mental health wellbeing helps to remove the emotional barriers to learning and build resilience, self-esteem, confidence and appropriate communication skills. We can offer an integrated therapeutic approach to working with children, young people and families using age appropriate techniques.

The Offer

• 1:1 emotional wellbeing support
• Group work
• Emotional and mental health support for young people
• Counselling
• Psychotherapy

We work closely within the Cluster team and with schools and other services, to promote the emotional and psychological wellbeing of children, young people and families.

Cluster Counsellors (children/young people)

Cluster counsellors provide emotional health assessments and interventions for children and young people 5-18 years and their families.

People come to counselling for many different reasons, for example relationship problems, bereavement and loss, depression, anxiety and panic, self harm , sexual abuse, domestic violence, self – esteem and confidence, anger management, identity issues and many more different problems or worries.

Counsellors are not allowed to talk about what people tell them during counselling. The only times when this would change are when a client gives permission for someone else to be told or if counsellor is worried about a client’s safety or the safety of someone else that the client has mentioned.

Emotional wellbeing worker

1:1 therapeutic work with children and young people

Personalised for a wide range of emotional and behavioural issues; each child/young person is offered short term age appropriate interventions. Creative activities such as drawing, painting and play can be used alongside talking.

Evidence shows that 1:1 therapy with children and young people is more successful when it involves family engagement in the process. Supporting the child enables them to fully engage and achieve better outcomes overall.

Psychotherapy

The kind of interventions that the child and adolescent psychotherapist can offer parents and families in school include: individual psychotherapy, therapeutic sessions for parents to support their child or adolescent. Psychotherapy, brief family work, consultation to staff, supervision to the children and young people’s workforce
and training on mental health.
The kind of complex difficulties that the child psychotherapist can work with in school include:
depression, suicidal thoughts and deliberate self-harm, anxiety, bereavement issues, trauma and post-traumatic stress, impact of severe deprivation and abuse entrenched separation and attachment difficulties, eating disorders e.g. anorexia and bulimia, neuro-developmental disorders e.g. ADHD, autism, conduct and emotional disorders, emotional aspects of learning and physical disabilities.

A core function of the child and adolescent psychotherapist’s contribution to children’s emotional wellbeing is to work actively with the network around the child. This is to ensure that the child’s emotional needs are held in mind by all who have contact with them and promote positive development and growth.