The aim of Counselling at St John’s is to help learners with a range of special needs, life issues, emotional difficulties and mental health issues to develop to their full potential and move forwards in their lives. Often the emotional support that counselling provides, enables learners to engage the educational and employment opportunities available to them through St John’s as a whole.

Who can benefit from Counselling?

Issues that counselling can help learners with include:

Developmental issues

Emotional Literacy

Communication of feelings

Difficulties in forming and maintaining relationships

Mental health issues

Coming to terms with past difficulties

Behavioural issues

Difficulties with food and body image

Identity issues

Self-esteem

Emotional regulation

Barriers to learning

Managing the prejudice of others around special needs

How do we work?

Counselling at St. John’s works with a variety of modes, according to the individual needs of the child or young person. Some of our learners choose to talk to the counsellors. Others use play, drama, puppet work, drawing, painting, sculpture and clay, sand tray work, mask work and mindfulness based approaches. Some use a combination of all of these or move between different modes at different times.

Our flexible approach – combined with expertise in psychological observation – allows us to engage and work with a wide variety of learners, including those with limited verbal communication.

How do learners benefit from our specialist approach?

The counselling service is headed up by counsellors with extensive experience in working with children and adolescents with a wide range of special needs. As part of the specialist Medical and Therapy Team, we are able to draw upon our colleague’s expertise in the field of sensory integration, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and nursing to inform our work.

We also work in a collaborative way with staff throughout the school and college offering group work, specialist consultation and training. We also contribute to annual reviews and individual learning plans.

Which approaches can we offer?

Our links with the University of Brighton, the University of East London and Roehampton mean that we are able to offer a wide range of approaches including humanistic, psychodynamic and cognitive-behavioural approaches as well as mindfulness – based therapy.