Recently, Little Lives UK have teamed up with The Listening Ear in Bournemouth to help to provide counselling to children of the local area who may not be able to usually afford it.
There is a large wealth divide in the BCP (Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole) area and for those whose families cannot afford counselling, life can be very hard especially when someone is suffering from poor mental health. A lot of children locally are affected with poor mental health and many have no means to see a professional about it and talk it through properly, making the problem worst. The pandemic, as has been widely reported, has had a huge impact of the mental health of children, not being able to see their friends, not being able to complete homework and not being able to live a carefree life as before.
Little Lives UK contacted The Listening Ear to see if they would be interested in being supported by our Someone To Talk To project which was started to provide free counselling sessions to children of BCP to which they agreed they would like to receive funding for the sessions.
The first sessions have started with five children being given a home visit and then a subsequent 7 hours of free one-to-one counselling with a friendly member of The listening Ear’s team.
The subjects the children will be discussing with their counsellors are anxiety, body dysmorphia, depression, gender identity and bullying. These subjects are ever changing and each month we expect to see a growing number of challenging subjects arise, especially to the lead up to winter and growing worries within a lot of communities about the Christmas period.
All of us at Little Lives UK are delighted to be working alongside the fantastic group of counsellors and staff that are The Listening Ear, providing a much needed and much over-looked service to those young people in our community who truly need as much help and support as possible.
