Wilmslow Youth

by Matt Williamson, Chief Executive of Wilmslow Youth

The famous proverb ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ captures much of what research tells us about how to effectively promote wellbeing amongst young people. Providing them with a community to belong to, where they can find healthy role models and strong friendships is just as important as ensuring they have easy and free access to professional mental health services.

We’ve found that support is at its best when it is multi-stranded, with professional therapeutic support being offered alongside wrap around care, opportunities to make friends, opportunities to be active, adventurous, and enjoy new experiences.

For that reason, our therapeutic services have always been accompanied by our youth café, friendship groups, wellbeing workshops and outreach programmes – all of which are free for the young people to access. We partner with other local community groups and charities to encourage shared thinking and signposting. The idea of all of this is that when a young person comes for one-toone support, they never finish without something in place to offer ongoing care and community for as long as they need it.

One of the big lessons for us over the years is that supporting the whole family is vital if we want to see young people in our community thrive. That’s why we started things like our parents and carers counselling service last year, and it’s why we now work in our local primary schools supporting Year 6 students in their transition to secondary school.

Moving up into year 7 is a huge rite of passage for children, and often a time of mixed emotions of nerves and excitement for both children and parents, and so if your child is just making the big move now, saying goodbye to their primary school years and starting the next chapter, we thought we’d share a couple of thoughts that might help:

How can I help as a parent?

• Find lots of time to listen to your child and to discuss their thoughts and feelings about leaving primary school and moving on. Open communication and good endings provide a sense of closure before starting a new phase in life.

• Help them to remember their strengths. Discuss all the times they’ve navigated change in the past and some of the challenges they have faced at primary school. Talk about what helped.

• Provide them with plenty of opportunities over the summer to deal with small challenges and to problem-solve, such as packing their own bags or navigating public transport. This could include advice on how and who to ask for help.

• Most importantly, remember to show them lots of love and care as they prepare to move on to secondary school.

list will include people they have known for a long time as well as some new names.

• Put together a ‘Worry Jar’. Take time to look at each worry and work out what will help to make it feel better and then practise relaxing / calming activities and plenty of self-care.

• Get organised! Practice the route to school, check out the website, have a shopping day out to buy everything they need, practice putting on the new uniform at home during the holidays.

• Have plenty of one-to-one time when possible, like a day trip out or going to a favourite café or park.

What can we do together to make the transition a little easier?

• Make a scrapbook or a box full of memories including a timeline, photographs of happy and fun moments, class trips and diary entries, particularly of the final few weeks of Year 6.

• Create a list of the people they know who will support them both inside and outside school. The

Wilmslow Youth, Wilmslow URC Chapel Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 1PR www.wilmslowyouth.com hello@wilmslowyouth.com facebook.com/wilmslowyouth instagram.com/wilmslow_youth x.com/wilmslowyouth