As Mental Health Awareness Week draws to a close, CXK is celebrating its success in delivering emotional wellbeing counselling services to thousands of Kent young people, and has announced plans to develop a support service for parents.
The charity’s recently published Impact Report identifies that in the past year alone, CXK has supported more than 1,000 children and young people, aged 5-19, across Kent with counselling services and targeted support. Of those young people supported, 99% said that the intervention had been helpful.
The charity has further announced plans to develop a support service for parents of those young people.
CXK began delivering its Emotional Wellbeing (EWB) counselling service as part of Young Healthy Minds in 2013; later launching its Emotional Wellbeing Service in 2017. To date, more than 8,300 EWB counselling sessions have been delivered by CXK in schools across Kent to young people aged from 5-19.
In a recent review of the service, CXK reported that from 2013-2017, Thanet, Swale and Shepway were the districts with the highest number of referrals whilst Sevenoaks was the lowest. The most common events which initiated referral to the service were family events, and divorce and separation. Anxiety, low self-esteem and anger were most common as the presenting behaviours or emotions, and the ages most frequently referred were children and young people aged 9-11 and 15 years. Over the course of the four years, the gender breakdown saw more females (56%) referred than males (46%).
The charity now plans to diversify its service to meet the needs of parents who are struggling to support their child’s mental and emotional wellbeing.
Sarah Mills, Assistant Director of Early Help Services at CXK, says: “In recent months we’ve noticed that a significant proportion of parents are struggling to know how to deal with their child’s emotional and mental health issues, and this is a problem that CXK is looking to address.
“In the coming months, CXK will be approaching funders with a proposal to expand upon our emotional wellbeing services, so that we can develop our service to provide county-wide support to the parents of children with emotional wellbeing issues.
“Our aim is to intervene with young people early enough that their issues do not lead to long-term mental health problems, as our experience shows that good mental health allows young people to develop the resilience to cope with whatever life throws at them and grow into well-rounded, healthy adults. By supporting parents too, this can only improve the young person’s chances of success.”
