How counselling boosts wellbeing

Purpose
To improve children and young ?people’s emotional health

Funding
£130,000 a year from contracts with individual schools, Stockport Council and donations. The GlaxoSmithKline Impact Award, run in partnership with the King’s Fund, recently ?awarded the service a £25,000 prize for outstanding contribution to ?improving the UK’s health

Background
Beacon Counselling started in Stockport in 1984 as a handful of volunteers offering counselling to adults. It has evolved to become a limited company and expanded to work with young people.

Action
The organisation piloted one-to-one counselling in one secondary school in 1996 and is now working in 12 education settings, including schools and two pupil referral units. Counsellors liaise with a “link” professional who refers young people identified by teachers or those who ask for help themselves.

Young people attend an initial meeting to assess their needs. Counsellors spend half a day to two days in school each week and will work with a young person for about six sessions, before reviewing the case. Counsellors generally work with young people for between five and 10 sessions.

The most common issues that come up are around home life and relationships with parents or families separating. Bereavement is also common and counsellors are seeing an increasing amount of anxiety due to issues including exam pressure and body image.

The project also runs the Confidence Programme in primary schools, where counsellors work with groups of six to eight children for six weeks, using a mix of playful exercises designed to encourage children to come out of their shells and connect with their peers.

Outcome
Beacon Counselling provided services to 536 pupils in Stockport secondary schools during 2011. Analysis using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale found increases in overall levels of wellbeing.

Outcomes forms completed by counsellors revealed 70 per cent of pupils who finished counselling showed increased confidence, 66 per cent had improved relationships at home and 60 per cent showed improved communication skills.

Young people were asked to give a score out of 10 for how they felt at the start and end of counselling; the average start score was 3.88, which rose to 7.85 on completion. An evaluation of the Confidence Programme found it had helped boost self-esteem, with pupils more likely to try new things and put their hands up in class.