Calderdale group promoting positive mental health for sick and disabled children amid Covid-19 lockdown

Yorkshire Children’s Trust are a small regional charity offering emotional and financial support to children with any long term illnesses or disabilities, especially those who would fall through the ‘funding gap’ of traditional support channels.

The charity, on Commercial Street, Halifax, is keen to support the mental health of children and young adults and has found a dramatic increase in requests for counselling and therapies since the lockdown from the coronavirus pandemic.

Sarah Thompson, Social worker and Counsellor at Yorkshire Children’s Trust said: “The mental health and wellbeing of children and young adults is of paramount importance to the charity and we work with social workers, teacher and parents to make sure we have positive outcomes for all the children that we support”.

As part of our positive mental health programme, the charity team has starting working in partnership with Narelle Gibbs who has written the ‘I CAN Journal’, a diary for children to express their emotions and focus on positive outlooks in their lives. The journal will be given to each child the charity supports alongside its other therapy and counselling options.

Narelle had this to say; “My daughter has been in and out of hospital over the last year with a complex and rare illness and as a result has been left with damage to both sides of her brain. and undoubtedly this is a lot for a young person to process and meant she closed down and wouldn’t speak to us about how she was feeling.”

“The I CAN Journal aims to support and develop children into becoming well rounded individuals that can continue to improve their skills, celebrate success and find the joy in the smallest things. The diary is set up to develop a positive mind-set and is an ideal supplement to the positive outcomes that achieved with counselling and play therapies at Yorkshire Children’s Trust.

I am pleased that my diary that I have designed based on personal experience will be used to support many children on their positive mental health journey.”

The team at Yorkshire Children’s Trust would like to thank Narelle for creating such a wonderful journal and are pleased to include it going forward as part of their support sessions.