Excellence Cluster Counselling Service

(Managed by Medway Excellence Cluster)

Every Child Matters outcomes met:

• being healthy

• staying safe

• enjoying and achieving

The project exists as an essential early intervention process for children aged 5 - 11 and their families. They either have the potential for developing emotional distress in their lives, say via a significant bereavement, or they are already displaying distress in its many forms. This distress can be a result of many issues impacting on the child and/or family. Therapists and counsellors use all sorts of ways to help children express their feelings, make sense of how they feel and sort things out. By having a local focused project we aim to keep referrals time to a minimum thus preventing the slide into deeper difficulties later on. Operates in 16 schools in the Medway Excellence Cluster, offering counselling and therapeutic support to children, their families and school staff: Burnt Oak, Barnsole Infant, Barnsole Junior, Brompton Westbrook Primary, Byron Primary, Featherby Infant, Featherby Junior, Greenvale Infant, Napier Primary, Saxon Way Primary, Skinner Street Primary, Twydall Infant, Twydall Junior, Wayfield Primary, Woodlands Primary.

During 2006 and 2007, the Service operated a project in the Twydall schools (known as PEND) to offer emotional support for children with physical disabilities and their families. Parents may attend support groups or receive individual support. Children are seen in groups or individually. The target age group tends to be in the latter part of the Junior school where some of the emotional effects of the children's disabilities sometimes begin to appear more obviously as the children think about transfer to secondary school.

There are clear links between improvements in factors relating to emotional literacy and counselling:

• increased ability to express feelings
• reduced anger and anxiety
• increased feelings of happiness

Excellence Cluster funding ends in March 2008 but schools are expected to buy into the existing service.

Case studies

Impact Evaluation Report(86KB)

Independent Evaluation of the counselling project(95KB)

Annual Report & Clinical Audit 2006/7(79KB)

Impact and Success of the Medway Excellence Cluster Partnership and Behaviour Improvement Programme(1.2MB)