Counselling gives people a safe space to talk so they can express themselves freely and feel understood. The therapist will listen, encourage and empathise, but will also help the students to see their issues more clearly or from a different perspective. Therapy will involve talking about life events, feelings, emotions, relationships, ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour. By talking about these things the counsellor helps a person to understand themselves better by learning about why they behave in certain ways and why events trigger certain feelings. Becoming more aware of the difficulties you are having allows you to feel more in control of finding ways forward and create positive changes you want to happen in your life.

Having sessions with a counsellor will give you the opportunity to help identify goals and potential solutions to your problems, aiming to look at improving communication, social and coping skills, self-esteem, self-care and promote positive behavioural change. During negative experiences counselling can help young people to build resilience so they can learn to cope and identify when something is wrong.

Promoting physical health and mental wellbeing is a key priority at The Stephen Longfellow Academy for both students and staff. Mental health refers to how we think, feel and how this impacts on our behaviour. Our emotional health affects how we cope with the challenges that can happen in life, our relationship with others and the life and lifestyle choices that we make. We can at times have positive and negative mental health which is affected by our life experience and the challenges that life brings. The academy has a health and wellbeing team, alongside our full global intervention offer, who provide support for targeted students, this can be at admission if a need is identified, through our weekly wellbeing triage meetings or in response to a change or challenge in their lives. This intervention can include check-in appointments, weekly or fortnightly wellbeing sessions and counselling. We want to empower our children/young people to learn how to self -care and look after their own physical and mental wellbeing. Please see the link to our health and wellbeing leaflet for further details.

Are you feeling low and are not sure why?
Have you been through a change or a challenging time, now or in the past?
Do you have unexplained feelings or have your emotions changed recently?
Do you feel like you cannot talk to anybody about how you feel?
Are you overwhelmed but don’t want to burden your friends and family?
Do you need support to understand your feelings, to identify the reasons for them and to help you to manage these feelings?

Many children/young people and adults may, at some time, face difficult events in their lives such as bereavement, bullying, physical illness, difficulty in relationships, low mood and trauma.  We may all experience feelings of anxiety, worried, feeling low, social pressure or changes in our behaviour or mood as a result of these events. We all may need support at some point in our lives to help us to cope with these difficult feelings and how they present in our behaviour.

Receiving wellbeing support can help us to gain control of our lives and emotions and give us the strength to overcome challenges. It is important to remember that there is nothing wrong with asking for help.

If you feel like you are having emotional difficulties, feeling anxious or worried, pastoral staff are available to talk and provide support. The academy has a referral and triage system for students who do not already access wellbeing support or counselling. A referral may be made in response to a life change or challenge, for example a bereavement or loss or a student may require additional support to help them manage their emotions or difficulties with positive mental health.

If a child/young person is referred for wellbeing support an allocated keyworker will complete baseline assessments. The Wellbeing team will complete an assessment, which is an introductory session taking into account all your needs and finding out areas of difficulty and how to support your health and wellbeing.

‘Referred and targets students for coaching and counselling will have an opportunity to talk through things. All students will have access to coaching or counselling on a regular basis. It is simply an opportunity to talk things through in confidence within a safe space. The amount of sessions will vary based on the needs of the young person. Typically, counselling will last between 6 – 12 sessions however it is always tailored to the young person’s needs.

Keeping young people safe is a priority in counselling work. The counsellor will explain that all of the things the young person talks about in the sessions will stay between them and will not be passed on to anyone else. However, the only exception to this is that the counsellor might have to pass information if the young person told them about something that put them or someone else at risk of harm.  If we have to do this, we would always tell you – we would tell you why and who we would have to speak to about it and explain the process that follows from this.

Have you heard about Teen Connect?

Teen Connect is a helpline for 13-16 year-olds living in the Leeds area. We can offer up to an hour of support either by phone or online chat. You can have up to an hour with one of our trained staff each night to talk about what you’re going through.

Who will support me?
All our staff have training in counselling skills. We’re not a call centre – we are a small, friendly team of people and we all have some experience ourselves of managing our own difficulties.

The Your Wellbeing Matters page is designed to provide Signposting support (for students & parents) to organisations and resources across a number of wide-ranging issues that can be either Physical and/or Mental Health.

Hub Of Hope:

Hub of Hope is the UK’s leading mental health support database. It is provided by national mental health charity, bringing local, national, peer, community, charity, private and NHS mental health support and services together in one place for the first time. You can search support available by adding your postcode.

The 10 Habits of Emotionally Healthy People 

Most of us pay close attention to our health and we treat threats to our physical well-being as soon as they occur, but we are much less proactive about protecting our psychological well-being, than we are our physical well-being. Adopting the following ten habits and ‘treating’ common psychological injuries when they occur will help protect your mental health and improve your emotional resilience. 

Habit 1 – Label feelings rather than people, making a distinction between what you think and what you feel and think about how you react emotionally.  

Habit 2 – Own (take responsibility for) your own feelings and emotional reality. Do not repress or negate emotions but deal with them in a meaningful and positive way.  

Habit 3 – Acknowledge when your negative emotions aren’t helping you or others and learn to self-regulate and problem-solve whatever is causing the emotion.(recognise the trigger) 

Habit 4 –Look for learning and growth in your negative emotions. What gains can you make from your emotions and what lessons can it teach you for the future? 

Habit 5 – Self-regulate to change unhelpful emotions into energized states and make those emotions useful (i.e. anger can become passion or drive to take action). 

Habit 6 – Be respectful towards and validate other people’s feelings, regardless of what they think of them and treat their feelings as you would want yours to be treated. 

Habit 7– Try to step into other people’s shoes, applying the resulting empathy to thinking about how your emotional responses impact on other people around you, especially the people who are special and mean something to you. 

Habit 8 -Do not play the blame game, and blame yourself or others as this doesn’t help to find solutions or move forwards. Guilt is a really powerful emotion which can have a massive impact on self-esteem and good mental health.  

Habit 9 – Limit judgment and criticism (aim for eliminating both) of yourself and others, this is unhelpful and can often make an emotional situation more complex and difficult to deal with.  

Habit 10 – Do not try to control or change others. You are in control of your own reality and future and need to concentrate on making sure that you have control over your own emotions and wellbeing. You cannot always control how other people respond to you.