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Our vision
Place2Be believes no child should face mental health problems alone. We work in close partnership with school communities, providing the therapeutic support services, expert training and the resources they need to improve the emotional wellbeing of children, young people, parents and teachers.
Our flexible model takes a ‘whole school’ approach by supporting not only pupils, but their families, and school staff as well. Place2Be’s vision is for all schools in the UK to have access to high quality, effective, evidence-based mental health support.
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In the past year...
We worked directly with 700 schools through our in-school support or training, reaching a school community of 380,691 children and young people. We developed resources to support schools and communities through the pandemic, which were viewed or downloaded over 85,000 times. “The events of 2020 have been exceptionally challenging for many families, but they have also highlighted the need for Place2Be in an unprecedented way. In particular, they have also fostered a greater sense of creativity and flexibility as we have rapidly adapted how we deliver our services. Schools are the hearts of our communities, and are essential partners in our efforts to reach some of our most vulnerable children and families in the UK.”
Catherine Roche,
Chief Executive, Place2Be
Our work focuses on four areas:
1. Supporting children and young people’s mental health through therapeutic work in schools 3. Building an expert workforce in the field of children and young people’s mental health 2. Building awareness, skills and knowledge in school
communities 4. Innovating, gathering evidence to drive improvements in the national system
Our reach and impact
Children and young people
Effective support at an early stage not only helps children and young people cope with challenging life circumstances, but can also prevent problems from escalating and becoming more serious in adolescence and adulthood. Place2Be’s own data demonstrates that our one-to-one support not only improves children and young people’s wellbeing, but that they continue to benefit from these improvements one year later. Place2Be’s support can also help children to get the most from their education. When we compared the pupils receiving our one-to-one support with pupils who had the same level of academic attainment and background characteristics, we found that they were able to keep pace with their peers academically, and the possible negative impact of their mental health difficulties appears to have been mitigated. For children and young people who had recently experienced fixed term exclusions, three quarters (74%) had fewer fixed term exclusions while they had counselling. In the past academic year, over 33,000 children and young people accessed a support service from Place2Be (either faceto-face or by phone).
Parents and carers
We continued to provide support for parents and carers in our partner schools. In the academic year 2019–20, we delivered 29,869 support sessions for parents and carers (either face-to-face or by phone), and supported 589 parents through specialist parent counselling sessions. In 2020, we began a research project to look at how a digital service could best support parents and carers of primary school age children who display more challenging behaviours. This development phase is continuing into 2020–21. Our frontline work reaches some of the most vulnerable in our society.
Of those who accessed Place2Be’s one-to-one weekly support:
After children have had Place2Be counselling, our results show that:
47% received free school meals.
38% had four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences
such as abuse, domestic violence or loss of a parent.
