The study followed a randomized controlled design, which is considered the gold standard in research methodology for assessing the impact of interventions and was nested within schools that did not have an established counselling service. One of the headline outcomes of this study was that schools taking part in the study that had previously not had a counselling service to that point, wanted to fund one and wanted the Metanoia Institute study team to provide it, so ‘accidentally,’ the Here4You (H4Y) school-based counselling service came into being as, perhaps uniquely, an evidence-based school counselling service.

Here4You continues to assess the impact of its service to schools and young people, providing an end of term report on the impact to each school and aiming to contribute to rigorous evidence on the effectiveness and impact of school-based counselling interventions to inform policymakers, educators, and mental health professionals about the potential benefits and limitations of implementing such programmes in schools.