North-West Charity Launches Children & Young People's Counselling Service

Back to school is often a time of excitement, new challenges and old friendships.

However, many young people find the annual September return to the classroom with its pressures, such as school changes and academic expectations, extremely stressful. What’s more, any existing issues such as parental separation, bullying and struggles relating to gender identity, can be heightened in this period of change.

There has been a huge increase in anxiety* amongst children and young people and many of the most vulnerable are finding themselves unable to access the support they need.

The NHS and other services are reporting that unprecedented numbers of referrals* have led to painfully long waiting times which may well lead to a crisis in children’s mental health services.

A recent investigation revealed that in 2023-24, there were 204,526 referrals of children made to mental health services with a primary cause of anxiety.* Yet the Mental Health Foundation believes that 75% of children and young people just aren’t getting the help they need.**

In a bid to respond to this need, one of the UK’s top relationships charities has announced it will be expanding its counselling services to provide a bespoke service just for children.

TLC: Talk, Listen, Change, recently launched its first commercial subsidiary, the profit-for-purpose counselling provider Now You’re Talking, back in May.

Now, ahead of what is expected to be a massive spike in demand for youth counselling services, Now You’re Talking has announced its expansion from solely individual and couples counselling to include children and young people as well.

Now You’re Talking will offer a range of counselling services to support young people, helping them tackle issues including anxiety, depression, bullying, family changes, and relationship difficulties. And crucially, because it’s just launched, it has no waiting list.

The services will be designed to reduce the pressures on parents and help children and young people deal with any emotional issues that may be brought on by the end of the summer holidays.

Michelle Hill, Chief Executive Officer for TLC: Talk, Listen, Change said: “As a mother myself, I find these statistics which are regularly hitting the headlines hugely worrying.

“We know that we often see big spikes in issues such as anxiety and depression at the end of summer for many young people, with worries about the new school year, bullying, family changes, and relationship difficulties making this a time of extreme pressure. On top of the general increase of children reporting mental health problems such as anxiety, this can’t fail to put even more stress on already bursting services.

“There is a huge lack of availability in support services, with waiting lists skyrocketing and children simply unable to get the help that they desperately need.

“Getting our new Children’s and Young People’s service ready to launch by the September spike is something we have worked so hard to achieve, and our whole team is ready to provide the support and guidance that young people need during this difficult and transitional time.”

https://nowyouretalkingtherapy.co.uk/backtoschool/