Kent Counselling for Schools
Your schools trusted pathway to wellbeing
How we work
For over 20 years, KCS has specialised in providing professional therapeutic support within education. Our counsellors become a trusted part of school life, working closely alongside pastoral and safeguarding teams.
Behind every counsellor sits the KCS clinical framework, providing specialist supervision, professional oversight, robust safeguarding and clear clinical standards.
This gives schools the best of both worlds: an embedded counsellor supported by the independence, expertise and clinical responsibility of an established specialist service.
Our counsellors are trained Integrative Therapists with extensive backgrounds working with young people within educational settings. Using a combined therapeutic approach that pulls together multiple therapeutic models, allowing support to be adaptable and developmentally appropriate for pupils.
Person-Centred Counselling - the core of our approach
The basis of person-centred counselling is understanding that the solutions to the challenges students are facing already lie within them, and can be realised with the help of a counsellor. An essential therapeutic approach that assists students in moving closer to reaching their highest potential as individuals.
Also referred to as person-centred therapy, its core principles are:
Empathy
Through empathic attunement can we understand why the student is behaving and feeling the way they are. The counsellor is able to “see through the eyes” of their client, creating a sense of validation and trust.
Autonomy
Having built a strong therapeutic relationship counselling helps develop personal power and resilience for clients, enabling new choices and decisions.
Cognitive-behavioural therapy
CBT
CBT is a form of talk therapy based on the premise that our thoughts and feelings can affect our behaviours. Through the process of developing self awareness we can learn how to manage unhelpful behavioural responses.
Uncovering learned behaviours, habits, and negative thought patterns can be empowering. Using methods such as journal writing, reframing of thoughts and practicing new responses really help students to shift and move forward.
Solution focused therapy
SFT can use goal-setting to create the solutions to the challenges clients are facing.
Also known as Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT), helps clients clearly define their current challenge or issue. Students are encouraged to set a clear, future orientated goals and focus on ideal outcomes. Imagining what the future can look like, whilst planning the necessary steps for goals to be achieved.
SFBT can also provide feedback about the things that haven't worked well historically, allowing new choices to be made.
Psychodynamic therapy
Psychodynamic therapy is another form of talk therapy. This model helps by looking back into a clients past experiences, in order that their present behaviours and moods can be better understood.
Also known as psychodynamic counselling and sometimes referred to as insight-oriented therapy, sessions involve the student and counsellor working through and examining unresolved conflicts and difficulties from the past. Helping create links between the past and unwanted projections and thought patterns and habits.
Art therapy
The medium of art as a means of expression supports the physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing of students.
There are three components of art therapy – the artist (the student), the artwork, and the therapist. The art therapist will choose specific materials designed to stimulate a range of sensory responses. Generating spontaneous imagery can help clients to freely connect with emotions and express feelings.
This can be a powerful process for help with overwhelming past experiences, allowing clients to organize their feelings and create a story about what happened. This model of therapy works particularly well for younger clients.
Play therapy
Play therapy enables a child’s natural form of creative expression and acts as a communication mechanism. Through play children are able to make more sense of, and help process the way they feel, as well as interpret the world around them.
Therapeutic play happens in a playroom that contains a play therapy toolkit. Typically, the toolkit consists of various toys, story books, instruments, different types of artistic materials, dolls and puppets, etc.
The client is free in terms of how they wish to play and might explore certain themes, or work with particular contents of the toolkit in a specific way. They can also experience lots of fun!
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is simply having a clear awareness of the present moment we are experiencing. Being in a mindful state allows clients to be fully here, right now. The opposite of mindfulness is mentally projecting into the past or future.
When we practice mindfulness we enter a light meditative state that allows us to become tuned to the present moment. By simply becoming aware of the sensations present in our bodies, and shifting attention to breathing we become mindful. When thoughts wander off, just effortlessly bring focused back to the breath.
With regular mindfulness practice, students and staff report becoming much calmer, focused and centred.
Setting up
We will initially work with your designated manager to develop a Service Level Agreement.
Subsequently, a liaison person to facilitate referrals and be the conduit for service reporting, will be required. This might be the Family Worker/ SENCO or Pastoral Support Manager.
We will need a confidential room to use regularly, preferably in a quiet location within the school.
From then on your counsellor will integrate and establish themselves within your school.
Please call us on 01732 495442 or contact us online.