Providing bespoke mental health and wellbeing services to children, young people, staff and parents in schools.
We have an amazing team of fully qualified counsellors working in primary and secondary schools across Greater Manchester supporting over 140 children and young people every week during term time. We also provide services in colleges and universities.
We deliver individual and group counselling sessions for children and young people within educational settings. We also offer counselling and supervision for school staff, alongside guidance and support for parents. In addition, we provide training for school staff to enhance their understanding of how best to support the young people they work with, as well as promoting staff wellbeing, self-care, and effective peer support.
Our work achieves evidenced improvements in pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, supporting their personal development and emotional resilience. This enables pupils to thrive, engage positively in school life, and creates a calmer, more supportive learning environment for the whole school community.
Our counsellors are all fully qualified and trained to work with children and young people and they incorporate different age-appropriate creative techniques such as sand tray, drawing, puppets and modelling to promote the safe exploration and processing of emotions in young people.
We are passionate about ensuring help is more easily available to support children and young people’s mental health. Explore the schools support below, contact us to discuss how we can help your pupils/students or find out more by downloading your free PDF brochure.
Sarah Barker
Children's Services Manager
Schools support for young minds:
Student counselling
We provide individual 1:1 sessions with pupils, providing them with a safe, non-judgemental and confidential space to talk and explore emotions through creative therapeutic techniques, tailored to their individual needs and interests. Such methods are adapted to be age appropriate and may include use of drawing and talking, art, sand-tray, board games, clay modelling, music, creative writing and poetry, to name just a few. All our schools counsellors are trained to work with neurodivergent students. Counsellors will work towards helping pupils to regulate and understand their emotions better and learn healthy and effective coping strategies.
Therapeutic groups
Small groups of similar aged students providing a safe space for group support with a themed issue such as:
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Anxiety
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Building self-esteem
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Exam stress
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Bereavement
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General emotion regulation
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Transition support (primary to secondary schools)
6 week programmes
1 hour educational sessions per week for 6 weeks focused on a theme such as:
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Improving anger regulation
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Coping with anxiety
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Building Self Esteem
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Transition (e.g. Primary to Secondary)
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Coping with Exam Stress
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Understanding neurodiversity
Staff support
Staff Counselling
Individual counselling sessions for staff. Sessions can be offered either online, face to face at The Counselling and Family Centre or in school.
Staff Supervision
Group or Individual Supervision sessions for safeguarding / pastoral staff. Sessions can be offered online, or face to face in school.
Staff Training
We design and deliver training tailored to the specific needs of the school. Training is typically offered as full‑day or half‑day sessions, though we can also provide shorter “lunch and learn” sessions covering a range of mental health topics, including:
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Mental Health Awareness
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Self harm and suicidal Ideation
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Being Trauma Informed
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Bereavement, Grief and Loss
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Mindfulness
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Neurodiversity
Themed assemblies and talks
We can deliver themed assemblies and talks to pupils, including those on mental health awareness, emotional wellbeing, positive relationships, anxiety, exam stress, resilience, the importance of sleep and more.
Critical incident support
Our service is designed to adapt to the evolving needs of each school. In response to critical incidents such as bereavement, we are able to extend provision to include additional individual and group support for students, as well as training and reflective support for staff, ensuring a coordinated and compassionate whole‑school response.
