Children and Young People aged 10-18yrs can access the School Counselling Service .
Counselling is one of a range of interventions that can help support the mental, emotional and social needs of children and young people. It provides a safe, private, regular space for a child or young person to talk through their thoughts and feelings with a trained counsellor. They can talk about difficulties that are important to them and work at their own pace. The counsellor will listen without judgement and work alongside them in understanding their experience.
Counselling respects a child and young person’s rights to privacy and confidentiality. This means that the counsellor will not share the content of a session unless there is a concern that someone is at risk. To be effective, it is important that any child or young person is keen to try counselling and is involved throughout the whole process of accessing service. A child or young person may have the capacity to give informed, self-consent for counselling or it may be that we need to ask a parent or carer to support consent.
Each school has been allocated a counsellor and for the foreseeable future, most 1 to 1 counselling sessions will be offered via an online platform. The School Counselling Service will also be working closely with individual schools to support a culture of nurture and to become an established part of the wider school community.
Each school has been asked to identify a School Counselling LINK who can help any child or young person through the process of accessing counselling. In Whalsay School, the LINK person is Brenda Hughson.
As a parent or carer you are very welcome to contact the SCS directly with any queries about the service; it may be that you feel your child or young person would benefit from accessing a counselling space or if your child or young person engages in school counselling, you may have questions around what is involved.
They can be contacted –
By email – schoolcounsellingservice@shetland.gov.uk
By Phone – Senior Practitioner, School Counselling Service Louise Wood on 01595 745594
or you can make contact through your schools identified LINK, Brenda Hughson.
