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Back to NewsWe are so proud of our ongoing collaboration with YES (Youth Enquiry Service) and the tangible difference it makes in the lives of young people. Our mission is to support youth mental health, and the YES school counselling project is a perfect embodiment of that commitment.
In this quarter, alongside Mersea Homes, our grant has gone towards supporting YES in match funding for school counselling. As we have only had the first half term of this academic year, the case study below is from the 2024/25 year. We have also provided an extract from a school’s termly impact report.
The positive results from the previous year underscore the importance of this service.
Case Study
13-year-old female client, seen in school.
Originally attended a wellness session at YES as she did not want to commit to counselling due to feelings that she could not talk to or trust anyone, or that they wouldn’t understand her.
She had poor attendance at school due to bullying and anxiety about attending. On attending the wellbeing session, the client stated she felt comfortable speaking to YES and would like to attend sessions. Having the sessions within the school day helped to encourage her attendance. Prior to starting sessions, she would have an average of 2-3 days week absent.
The sessions are mainly based around anxiety and low self-esteem. As a teenage girl who favoured the alternative over the popular, she had encountered some bullying at school as well as finding it difficult to make friends with similar interests. YES worked on coping strategies for her anxiety and acceptance and embracing of self. YES then spoke about friends and approaching new people, discussing what it meant to not follow the crowd and how that felt. They then worked on solidifying feelings of identity, individualism and taking pride in those things. Over the course of our sessions together, her attendance at school improved and her friend circle grew by 2 people. It was wonderful to see the growth of self-esteem and resilience over this period, and she now rarely has time absent from school and feels more confident in herself and her abilities to cope.
YES now have a wellness session every 2 weeks, which will drop to monthly to help reinforce her new outlook.
Impact statement from a school with an in-house counsellor
The impact made by the YES service has been invaluable, it has such a positive impact on our student’s mental health and wellbeing. We are able to refer students and they receive beneficial, impactful 1-2-1 support with little waiting time – rather than having to refer to external agencies and they be offered group work or end up on a lengthy waiting list.
The benefit of the service being in school also helps to de-stigmatise asking for and receiving support.
