Beacon Counselling

NOTE: THIS SITE IS NOW AT

www.beacon-counselling.org.uk

(Registered Charity No. 1109545)

Confidence Programme

Overview
The Confidence Programme was created in Beacon to provide and earlier intervention in potential mental health problems for children. The programme is for children who are not yet displaying diagnosable signs of mental health problems, but are nonetheless struggling. This may be that they are quiet, shy, withdrawn, or reluctant to put their hand up in class and engage, or that they are new to a school and not settling in very well. These are all indicators that problems may arise, or already be present but not severe, and intervening at this stage will prevent problems becoming worse. The overall aim is to build children’s resilience so that they can engage with school life, and that problems are avoided, prevented from becoming worse, or highlighted earlier.

The Confidence Programme was piloted as part of TAMHS (Targeted Mental Health in Schools), which was a programme run by Stockport MBC to pilot new initiatives that would improve the mental health of 5 – 13 year olds. The programme was piloted in 5 schools, with a Beacon Schools Counsellor leading the facilitation and a member of the school staff there as co-facilitator.

The major innovation with the programme is the fact that Beacon provides the experience and the training to the co-facilitator, thus leaving the schools with the means to continue delivering the Confidence Programme indefinitely at no cost.

Outcomes
The initial results from the Confidence Programme were that children benefited significantly from taking part, in that they had increased confidence, self-esteem, and better communication skills. A longer term benefit is that the existence of the group created friendships and a support network that was not there beforehand for a lot of the participants, and in some schools removed antagonism between children who took part. Another benefit is the relationship between the Co-facilitator (member of the school staff) and the children became stronger, trust grew, and children confided more in the member of staff. This often led to greater and/or earlier knowledge of safeguarding concerns.

Funding
The funding from TAMHS came to an end, and any work since then has been paid for directly by the primary school concerned. There are plans to reach many more schools from 2013 onwards.