Workshops for pupils

We hear that children and young people are increasingly feeling the burden of caring for their friends, parents or peers. We want to support, upskill, and contextualise the process of care-giving for pupils within KS2.

Schools can choose one workshop or a combination which they may feel their students would benefit from attending.

Being a peer mentor

Children and young people are often keen to offer support to their peers by taking on roles such as peer mentor, “buddy” or mental health ambassador.

With appropriate training and support, this can be beneficial in developing a nurturing and empathic school community.

This training offers pupils the knowledge, skills and language to help them support others effectively, safely and with confidence.

Activities include:

• Practising the key skills needed in “active listening”, including verbal and non-verbal communication. 
• Understanding the limits of their responsibility and the importance of seeking adult support.
• Opportunities for roleplay, rehearsing how to respond helpfully and safely to a range of situations.

Supporting your friends

Young people often choose to share with each other first and we want to support them in doing this without feeling responsible or overwhelmed.

We are aware, within our clinical work, of the burden and pressures this can place on the friend who listens and supports.

Our groups are aimed at students who tend to undertake the role of ‘carer’ in their relationships, to help them to understand their role, the pressures it can bring, and how to maintain healthy boundaries within relationships.

Understanding your parent/carer’s mental health

Having a parent who struggles with their mental health can be really challenging for children and young people. Our workshops have the sole intention of exploring what it feels like to worry about, care for, or perhaps miss a parent when they are either physically absent, or psychologically absent or preoccupied.

We seek to support children and young people to understand whose feelings are whose and to empower them to know that if their parent isn’t okay, it isn’t their fault, nor is it their responsibility to fix.

If you would like further information about these workshops, please email Catherine Munns.

Our work in schools has become more creative and holistic. Given the impact of the pandemic and the resulting increasing demand for student support, we are offering themed process groups to your students.

What format does this take?

• We can offer up to 4 separate process groups in one day.
• Themes will be identified by your setting and may include issues such as anxiety, parental separation, loss, self-harm, exam pressures and friendship issues.
• Each process group will be run twice, ideally within a two-week timeframe.
• We recommend up to 8 students in a group.

If you would like further information about this workshop, please email Catherine Munns.

A workshop aimed at students who present as challenging, confrontational, unpredictable and/or angry.

We will run a targeted group for students with a view to supporting them to understand what is triggering them to display aggression, engage in power battles, appear to be dominating or challenging, or, essentially, appear quick to anger.

Our therapist will support students to understand what anger is, what we tend to displace within angry responses, what emotional dysregulation is, what triggers are, and why it is important to know that anger is simply a defence mechanism.

We will support students to understand what emotion tends to precede anger, and how to catch that one (often a feeling of vulnerability or fear) and challenge the ‘safer’ presentation of anger.

If you would like further information about this workshop, please email Catherine Munns.

Exam stress is a reality for adolescents and as a response to this we run a series of two x 1.5 hour workshops for Years 11 and 13, to be run over two separate sessions.

We have also found that it is a reality for many primary school children as they approach SATs and school entrance exams and have adapted this delivery for years 5 and 6 also.

Each group can run with up to 14 students (either on a self-referral or staff targeted basis) and gives attendees the chance to explore the stress they are experiencing and contextualise this by focusing on family, peer and school dynamics.

We use case studies and the students’ own experience to support them in understanding how they internalise or externalise stress and will offer a mindfulness thread throughout.

Learning mindfulness techniques can empower students with practical exercises they can use at home and even in the exam room itself.

Students have told us what they think about our workshop:

As a group we spoke about stress as a whole and then more of us opened up about feeling this.

It made me understand I wasn’t alone.

Hearing people’s thoughts and silently relating to it. Knowing that you are not alone even if you don’t talk.

Cost: £600

If you would like further information about this workshop, please email Catherine Munns.

Audience: Primary aged children

Delivery: 1 hour informal session delivered by a Child and Adolescent Therapist

These workshops are delivered directly to children – generally to the whole class.

We are aware of the increase in children’s anxiety and this workshop has been written as a follow-on to the ‘Addressing the Issue of Anxiety’ workshop which we are already delivering to school staff.

Primary age children rarely have the language to communicate effectively when they are experiencing feelings of anxiety, but it is something they will feel regularly.

• During the workshops we will seek to support children to understand and normalise the issue of anxiety and have a mindfulness thread running throughout.
• We will identify where anxiety connects for people, how and why we feel anxious and how anxiety can affect children and young people when it isn’t spoken about or acknowledged.
• All workshops are highly interactive and use a combination of case studies, games and activities alongside the chance to talk and share.

If you would like further information about this workshop, please email Catherine Munns.

The workshop is written entirely with the focus being to support pupils in their exploration of the issue of bullying and has been adapted for both primary and secondary schools.

We will support students in understanding why a bully may become a bully and we begin to think about a bully free of this title. In doing this, we are seeking to do two things: to enable students to see the ‘bully’ with empathy, which will therefore naturally reduce the bully’s ‘power’.

We will explore the theme of power throughout this programme, both from the stance of what makes a bully seem powerful, and how pupils access their powerful selves within this new framework of thinking.

We are offering this workshop to Form groups in Year 8 given that they have ‘survived’ their transition from primary to secondary school and have begun finding their individual roles within the school and within peer groups.

Delivery to Year 8 students will mean they carry this thinking throughout their school life.

In the primary setting we have found that Years 5 and 6 engage well and respond to the interactive delivery.

If you would like further information about this workshop, please email Catherine Munns.

Students say:

It was useful to find out what might be going on in the bully’s life and that they might take be taking out their personal emotions on someone else.

I enjoyed this because I now know what to do if I ever find myself feeling upset or insecure. Also I learnt the reason behind people becoming bullies.
 

A Year 8 teacher says the workshop was:

..very informative - the children were engaged and interacted well. It was useful to see what bullying is from both sides (the bully and the bullied) and how it impacts.

Mindfulness is not only aimed at adults.

The delivery of an age appropriate mindfulness practice is gathering momentum in schools and we already weave a thread of this throughout our exam stress and anxiety workshops for pupils.

Our mindfulness workshops can be adapted for any age group and are an interactive way to learn about techniques to promote a sense of calm, focus and general well-being.

These sessions can be tailor-made to fit your requirements and can last from half an hour upwards.

We have been delivering to Year 11 and 6th form students and have adapted our programme to offer to primary schools who would like mindfulness sessions for all classes.

In response to schools wanting additional sessions after experiencing the Introduction to Mindfulness workshop, we have started deliveries of themed workshops, one of these being Mindfulness for Exam Stress.

During this workshop, students can learn some mindfulness techniques to cope with pre-exam anxiety but also to use in the exam room itself.

Please contact Louise Picton for more information on this workshop, or to discuss requirements for your particular setting.

Read on for a testimonial from a Primary Headteacher:

Children's wellbeing is more poignant now than ever before - the mindfulness sessions allow the children to develop strategies to take some time out from the pressures of growing up today. They really enjoy them and the parents comment very positively too. In our recent Ofsted inspection, the mindfulness sessions the children have taken part in were praised highly.