Schools counselling charity Place2Be wins Big Society Award

12 May 2014 03:18 PM

Place2Be wins Prime Minister’s Big Society Award for providing children with emotional health and wellbeing support in school. 

An independent charity since 1994, Place2Be now works in over 210 schools nationwide, building children’s resilience and emotional wellbeing. Its services include 1-to-1 counselling involving talking, creative work and play, as well as self-referral lunchtime sessions for pupils. The charity also provides support for parents, teachers and school staff. Services are delivered by a combined team of more than 1,100 staff including trained specialist volunteer counsellors.

Place2Be currently reaches 80,000 children, helping them to cope with wide-ranging and often complex social issues including bullying, bereavement, domestic violence, family breakdown, neglect and trauma.

Children who have Place2Be’s 1-to-1 counselling show significant improvement in their emotional wellbeing and peer relationships and a reduction in behavioural difficulties and classroom disruption. Teachers and parents say that improvements in these areas have a positive impact on children’s classroom learning. Place2Be is also a well-established training provider, supporting over 3,000 professionals each year.

Prime Minister David Cameron said:

Place2Be counsellors are supporting thousands of young people to achieve their potential in primary and secondary schools all across the country.

I’m delighted to recognise everyone at the charity with this Big Society award.

Place2Be Chief Executive Catherine Roche said:

We are truly delighted with this award which recognises the difference our clinicians and hundreds of professionally trained volunteer counsellors ‎make to the mental health and wellbeing of thousands of children in both primary and secondary schools across the UK.