All children are offered the opportunity to talk to someone on their own if they wish. Although we recognise the benefit of small group work some children and young people prefer individual support sessions, which include play, creative writing, drawing, painting, games, memory boxes and of course telling their story. These sessions can vary from 1 to 6 visits and in certain circumstances can be longer term. The amount of individual support offered this year has been less due to the increase in numbers of children attending workshops as well as the numbers of teachers now trained to offer individual support in school.

We have been able to train more volunteers and now have 79 volunteers who offer a combination of first visits, individual support and group workshop support.

In the next few months we aim to introduce a longer initial family visit which will include undertaking the Goodman’s SDQ psychological questionnaire. This will help in deciding the appropriate type of intervention to offer a child, the need of urgency and in the longer term will enable us to monitor how effective our intervention has been.