Buying our Services

Our approach

The Let’s Talk approach comes from an attachment-promoting and trauma-responsive perspective. We have developed a range of therapeutic, health promotion, education and training approaches and programmes which can be tailored for individual young people and for professionals.  Our services are effective at reducing children and young people’s distress, increasing their confidence and helping them find healthy ways to cope.

Our training has helped to increase professionals’ skills, knowledge and confidence to support children and young people with their sexual, emotional and mental health.  We are flexible to make our services fit with your work.  We aim for all our work to be high quality and our staff always aim for best practice.

We have piloted our therapeutic programmes and have found they are effective for addressing a wide range of difficulties, including:

• Sexual risk-taking,
• Self-harm and suicidal thoughts,
• Low mood and anxiety,
• Low self-esteem and confidence,
• Bullying or isolation,
• Substance use, or parental substance use.

Our work meets many of the Curriculum for Excellence Health and Wellbeing Experiences and Outcomes (e.g. HWB 3.01a – 3.09a + 3.14a; HWB 4.01a – 4.09a + 4.14a). It also reflects the Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) approach as it was developed with young people at the centre and it aims to support young people to achieve the 8 indicators of well-being (safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included). We have embedded the GIRFEC approach and paperwork into our practice and our Managing Director was trained as a GIRFEC trainer, supporting training for local practitioners.

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Our principles for delivery

We believe that it is vital to provide a very high standard of service to the young people and organisations that we work with.  To ensure that this high standard is consistently maintained, all staff and volunteers must adhere to a comprehensive policy/procedure framework including safeguarding and safety planning.  All staff and volunteers adhere to the guiding principles listed below when undertaking work within any setting:

• Use language that does not exclude anyone on the basis of sex or gender identity, sexuality, disability, race or religion,
• Be mindful of content and topics that are being discussed by young people or workers and an awareness of how they may impact individual young people, 
• Role models being positive and endeavour to boost young people’s confidence,
• Help to increase young peoples’ understanding of their ‘giftedness’ and their positive qualities,
• Emphasise positive feelings as a group facilitator of working with your group,
• Use the power of genuine compliments to raise confidence and self-esteem and acknowledge any compliments offered amongst the group,
• Affirm and acknowledge everyone’s participation in the group,
• Have awareness that young people who are exhibiting challenging behaviours are dealing with difficult feelings. Always be mindful that talking about sexual or emotional health can sometimes be difficult for young people, 
• Listen to young people’s experiences and facilitate sessions from their perspectives. 
  

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Planning

We will work with you to find out what you think will work best for the young people you work with.  We create a Partnership Agreement that details all roles and responsibilities and other arrangements.

• We use the Piers Template to plan, implement, evidence, reflect and share our work. 
• If you buy our services you will always receive an evaluation report for the service we provided.
• We reflect on learning from all of our service provisions and adapt programmes according to feedback from partners and young people.

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Let’s talk about it, one-to-one

This is a therapeutic one-to-one service – the programme is flexible to meet the needs of individual young people and is suitable to support those who are experiencing mental/emotional/sexual health difficulties. It aims to try and prevent deterioration into more serious mental health issues.  In particular, this programme is effective for very vulnerable young people, those at risk of exclusion from school or those most at risk of being taken into care. 

It is appropriate for young people with the following risk factors: 

• High level of family discord,
• Inconsistent approach to parenting,
• Physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse,
• Neglect,
• Parental drug and/or alcohol problem,
• Parental psychological problems,
• Being looked after by the State for more than 1 week,
• Experience of loss, death or lack of meaningful contact with a specific and significant other,
• High levels of poverty,
• Involvement in or witness to community violence,
• Victim or perpetrator of bullying.

We have found it beneficial for very vulnerable young people because it works around chaotic lifestyles which some young people may experience, we take time to build relationships of trust and it can be delivered at any venue which suits the young person (e.g.a school, community venue or secure unit).   We do not exclude those who find it difficult to attend.

This programme can be short-term or long-term to offer support during periods of crisis and it supports young people to identify areas for change, make changes in their behaviour and manage their feelings in healthier ways.  Usually, meetings are held once a week (or at times to suit the young person) and last up to one hour.  We tailor support to each young person and may use a range of psychological, sensory, mindfulness or a variety of counselling/therapeutic approaches.  We can offer a ‘clinic’ approach for schools, with one worker offering up to five sessions a day, with the option to call in young people on a reserve list to make the best use of all appointments.

It is voluntary for young people to engage in this service and can not be used as a punishment or a requirement for other support.  It is not a behavioural approach but a means to understand what is going on for the young person and help them explore what they think might help.

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Let’s talk together – Social Education Plus (SE+)

This is a therapeutic group work programme that is delivered over an 8-to-10-week period, in sessions of up to one hour. It can be issue-based (e.g., dealing with anxiety, low mood, self-harm, eating difficulties, bullying or improving self-esteem and social skills). It aims to support young people to explore how they feel and find healthy strategies to cope. It can also be combined with specialist sexual health and relationships education, or risk-taking programmes for young people who may have experienced trauma.

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Education programmes

We can develop bespoke education and health promotion services – around a range of sexual/emotional health, substance use and risk-taking topics to meet the needs of the young people that you work with. We can include an introduction and/or visit our community health drop-ins where young people can access pregnancy testing or free condoms with C: Card along with a range of health advice services.  We can provide specialist sexual health education programmes for young people who may have missed out on sexual health, relationships, or parenthood education at school, or for young people who have experienced sexual violence.

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Consultation, therapeutic supervision and training for professionals

Linking to our therapeutic work, we also offer training and consultation services to professionals who work with young people, to increase confidence, knowledge, and skills.  We can deliver bespoke training programmes to suit the needs of individual teams on the following topics:

• Attachment-promoting and trauma-responsive practice. 
• Supporting young people to improve their sexual, emotional or mental health.
• Supporting young people who are experiencing difficulty due to their own substance use or parental substance use.

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Evaluation

We use a variety of evaluation methods to ensure our programmes are effective. Where possible, we collect information using online forms to make it more young-person-friendly and easy to collate and analyse. We evaluate each piece of work using a range of forms that can be adapted to measure any specific outcomes you may be interested in:

• A job sheet to collect quantitative information (numbers of individuals and contacts)
• An equalities measure to collect information on age, sex/gender, sexuality, housing situation, ethnic group, religion, work or study status and disability
• A session evaluation to measure the enjoyment of sessions and any learning
• YP Core is a nationally validated measure of distress before and after therapeutic support. Scores over 25 indicate that a young person could benefit from some support
• The Stirling Children’s Wellbeing Scale which measures wellbeing
• The Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale which measures mental wellbeing
• A GIRFEC measure developed by HOT to measure young people’s well-being against the GIRFEC indicators, before and after therapeutic support
• An end-of-programme questionnaire, collecting information from both young people and referrers to measure any noticed changes in behaviour and feelings after support
• A training evaluation collects participants’ views of any increases in their skill, knowledge, and confidence.

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Benefits of our services

The table below shows the impact of our therapeutic services on thousands of young people who participated during the time this programme was delivered at the Health Opportunities Team.

		Yr 1	Yr 2	Yr 3	Yr 4	Yr 5	Yr 6	Yr 7
1-1	Average first YP Core score	28	26.9	28.5	30.1	17	29	31
	Average last YP Core score	17	17.6	16.1	17.3	33	18	22
	Average shift	-11	-9.3	-12.4	-12.8	-16	-11	-9
Groups	Average first total	21	19.3	22.3	21.4	20	25	25
	Average last total	19	16.7	28.1	16.4	14	18	15
	Average shift	-2	-2.6	5.9	-5.0	-6	-7	-10

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