Supporting Children: Emotional and social wellbeing

A child’s emotional equilibrium underpins their success in every area; in education, in their development and on the social scene.  When the emotional wellbeing balance is upset, for whichever reason, the child’s world can quickly begin to crumble.

With a focus on early intervention, we offer both clinical support including psychotherapy, and non-clinical  support, including mentoring and social skills training to children and young people with emotional and mental health difficulties.

1:1 Psychotherapy: Art/Play

We offer individual psychotherapy sessions that are focussed on children’s specific targets.

Children often communicate best through non-verbal means, such as art or play. This expressive therapy allows children to work through their traumas and gain essential skills. By fostering their abilities to self-regulate, we empower them to overcome emotional challenges and cultivate resilience.

Trained therapists may incorporate specialized modalities such as EMDR, if they deem it beneficial for your child's therapy.

1:1 Psychotherapy: Music

We offer individual music therapy sessions that are focused on children’s specific targets.

Children express themselves through music, using rhythm and beats to work through traumas and gain the skills to manage their emotional difficulties. Music taps into the rhythm of the soul and needs no verbal communication to develop a healthy emotional being.

Shimmy had developed worrying tics and so went to Children Ahead for music psychotherapy. After 6 sessions his tics almost completely stopped, but besides that, he became much easier at home, giving over his seat to his younger sister, and becoming much less irritable and much nicer to be around!

Shimmy’s father

Emotional and Social skills groups

We offer group sessions that are focused on children’s specific targets.

We offer various activities in group settings, and the children work through specific social-skills as led by the facilitator. Each session may focus on building a specific social skill.

Music groups

We offer music group sessions that are focussed on children’s specific targets.

In the sessions the children use individual instruments and singing to create music together. They learn to listen to themselves and others so they become a unified whole.

Since Shira joined the singing groups she’s been singing all day at home. It’s so unusual for her but I can tell she’s opening up and being less shut-down. It’s an incredible change!

Shira’s Mother

Boys mentoring “Build ‘n’ Boost”

We offer a mentoring programming where each child is paired with a volunteer mentor who is trained and supervised by our emotional health clinical leads.

Sessions are activity-focussed and user-led. Activity options include art, music, baking or sensory play where children can express their interests and ideas.

The mentoring programme is an excellent early intervention tool for children and young people struggling emotionally and can prevent problems from escalating and requiring clinical input.

The safe and non-judgemental space is conducive to children opening up, expressing their feelings and building trust.

We work closely with Sunbeams, an incredible local charity that runs a mentoring programme for girls

Therapeutic singing groups

We offer group singing sessions. Sessions works around individual children’s social and emotional targets, which are addressed and developed through interactive singing exercises.

Chess groups

We offer therapeutic chess groups. Our qualified chess facilitator pairs children of similar ability and level to learn strategic chess playing.

Chess is used as a medium to develop educational and social skills.

Each child is challenged to work towards their targets whilst learning the tricks of chess-playing and strategic planning in a playful setting.

Ezra used to be way more impulsive and has now learnt to slow down, think, and take into account all possibilities. Also, he never used to want to play chess, because he didn’t want to constantly lose. He is now happy to initiate games with people better than him, saying that his instructor emphasises that it’s okay to lose because  we learn every time. It was truly amazing to see how he really internalised all this in such a short time, and he gets better at it every single week…”

Ezra’s Mum