Here4You - Metanoia

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Here4You also provides support to secondary school and college staff in order to promote wellbeing. Our qualified counsellors are trained in the humanistic approach, which allows them to provide a professional, evidence-based service in collaboration with the young person and school staff.

Counselling in schools is a very accessible and acceptable way for young people to receive the support they need. It can play a key role in early intervention and proactively change the lives of students allowing them to build resilience and obtain life goals.

Here4You offers the following key services:

Individual counselling
Staff support/Supervision
Responding to on-site crisis/emergency with counselling provision both individual and group
Group work
Peer Support Training
Staff training, reflexive groups and consultation
Rapid response

Increasing evidence suggests that school-based humanistic counselling is effective at reducing psychological distress and helping young people achieve their personal goals. The approach is founded on person-centred assumptions and makes use of social psychology research to help young people become more attuned with their authentic feelings, wants and needs, enhancing their capacity to identify, manage, and overcome distresses arising from challenging situations.

It is a flexible intervention that can be adapted depending on problem severity and personal capacity, and has been evaluated positively by students and school staff as an effective means of bringing about improvements in students’ mental health and emotional wellbeing.

Here4You was established following a successful Randomised Control Trial (RCT) of school-based counselling led my Metanoia Institute. The study followed a randomized controlled design and was nested within schools that did not have an established counselling service; a headline outcome was that schools taking part in the study wanted to establish a counselling service provided by the Metanoia Institute study team. Here4You subsequently came into being as a unique, evidence-based school counselling service.

Here4You aims to offer a ‘best fit’ service for each individual school, providing a professional, evidence-based service in collaboration with young people and school staff. In turn, it can provide young people a space to express and explore their thoughts and feelings, develop social interaction skills, improve self-image and confidence, and identify avenues for change.

Should you wish to learn more about the Here4You service, please complete this form

Alternatively, you can contact Rita Moran, Schools Counselling Liaison Officer, rita.moran@metanoia.ac.uk

Aims of Here4You

The General Aims of Here4You Include:

Offering a ‘best fit’ service for each individual school
Being integrated into the broader pastoral care service provided
Involving young people in partnership in all levels of the service
Providing a professional, evidence based service in collaboration with the young people and school staff
Building trusting relationships with students and staff
Expressing and exploring thoughts and feelings
Developing social interaction skills
Improving self-image and self-confidence
Identifying avenues for change

The Here4You Story

The Here4You school-based counselling service was established following a successful Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) of school-based counselling led by Metanoia Institute, with the aim to evaluate the effectiveness of school-based counselling interventions in improving mental health outcomes for young people.

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.