Child counselling referrals for mental health issues double in Wiltshire
A Salisbury family counselling charity has been awarded a grant to cope with demand
The Family Counselling Trust Wiltshire has been awarded £6,600 from Wiltshire Community Foundation’s Coronavirus Response Fund.
The trust’s chairman Dr Alison Sankey said the grant will help pay the salary of its family liaison officer and fund courses of six counselling sessions for dozens of children aged between five and 18 from low-income families who are referred by schools, GPs and their parents. It treated more than 100 children and young people last year.
“This grant from Wiltshire Community Foundation will make a huge difference because it will allow us to cope with the additional demand we are seeing. Since the schools went back in March we have seen referrals double and we are busier than ever.
“There are many more highly anxious children and a lot who have been really affected by bereavement, often of grandparents who may have played an important role in supporting the family.”
She said the young people being referred have been more exposed to traumatic situations because of lockdowns or being sent home from school because of Covid cases. “Children are often experiencing these much more intensely because they have been stuck at home, particularly where they may be domestic abuse or substance abuse. They are seeing stuff that they may have been aware of but perhaps not so exposed to before.”
Dr Sankey said anxiety manifests itself in many ways and can lead to tension and family breakdowns. “It can lead to not eating, not sleeping, lost confidence in social situations, difficulty in making friends, fears about going to school and fear about what is happening at home,
“You also see meltdowns and aggression in younger children. It is very common to see aggression displayed as a form of anxiety because they can’t actually recognise they are anxious.”
The charity, which has four branches covering Wiltshire, Hampshire, Somerset and Dorset and was recently visited by Wiltshire High Sheriff Sir Charles Hobhouse, assesses each referral and connects the child with a suitable therapist in their area.
“The therapist will work on fairly limited but reachable goals in helping the child recognise what they feel when they become anxious and then begin to teach them what they can do to manage those feelings, using skills of relaxation, meditation or mindfulness or whatever it is that can help them,
“We also work with the family to teach them how to manage their own anxiety and work with all of them to help the child move forward. That may be with art therapy, cognitive therapy or family therapy.”
The majority of children the trust sees are aged between 11 and 12. Dr Sankey said it is important to tackle issues early. "If you don’t address these problems in children early they continue into adolescence and adulthood,
“The vast majority of more serious mental health problems begin in adolescence and if you can treat them before that it makes a massive difference.”
The trust works in the Salisbury and west Wiltshire area as well as around Chippenham and Devizes, although it wants to recruit more therapists in the north of the county and is also targeting Army families around Salisbury Plain.
The trust pays therapists a commercial rate for each session and asks families to pay a £5 contribution. It needs to raise around £60,000 a year to keep operating.
You can find out more about their services here.