Children’s Mental Health Week – My Voice Matters!

To build trust and emotional safety.

To gain a shared sense of meaning.

To feel heard and valued.

To understand the child’s personal perspective.

To understand the child’s thoughts, wishes and feelings.

To feel they matter and that they belong.

The environment and sense of emotional safety that the small group and context of the intervention offers, allows children to really express themselves, feel heard and able to share their thoughts and feelings.

A safe space away from the classroom that is comfortable, welcoming and nurturing.

Knowing they are not alone and that others in the group have similar feelings and experiences too.

A safe space for sharing ideas, reflecting and being together.

The quality of the relationship is the powerful element that makes the difference to a child’s ultimate wellbeing.

The adult helps the child to feel special, seen and heard.

Puppets are extremely powerful in helping children talk about difficult things without them feeling exposed or vulnerable.

Children can speak with and through the puppets helping them to express and reflect on their own emotional experiences.

Safety in talking in the third person, distancing themselves from talking directly about themselves.

Puppets can be playful allowing the children to play and have fun.

Helping children to understand the concepts around emotions and to develop self-awareness and self-regulation.

Collaboration with their peers to create a sense of belonging and friendship.

Learning ways to understand and manage feelings.

To capture the child’s voice pre and post intervention and to show measurable change.

Our research report presents child’s voice as a central element to the evidence base.

Children need multiple, repeated experiences of adults noticing, labelling and validating their emotions in a safe, relational way so that all feelings are acknowledged, accepted and safe to have.