Our Mission Statement

We will provide a service that uses high quality therapists that are appropriately trained with a wide experience of working with vulnerable groups of children and families. We want to provide our service at the time of need and in a setting that is conducive. Providing therapies that are creative and fully accessible to children, not reliant on being able to talk about the difficulties. There are significant gaps in mental health services available within the communities and we want to be able to fill these gaps with an accessible community based service.

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About eQUiPT Therapeutic Service

Sandra is the therapist behind eQuiPT Therapeutic Services. Sandra has a wealth of experience of working with children and families and is passionate about her work. Sandra has been a Play and Filial Therapists for over 13 years and is committed to helping children who struggle with emotional, social and behavioural difficulties. Sandra is also an advocate for therapy to be accessible to all and not just the few receiving funding, therefore spends time fundraising for children in need of eQuiPT's skills. 

 

eQuiPT stands for Quality in Psychological Therapies and aims to help and support children, individuals, families, professionals, and groups to increase and improve their understanding of emotional mental health difficulties.

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About Our Services

eQuiPT Therapy Service provides a service that offers therapy to children and families including those that can be funded by private individuals, schools and government funding and those children and families who otherwise cannot access therapy through these means via fundraising and bid writing. 

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We offer accessible therapy, emotional support and personal development interventions to children, young people, and families, enabling them to achieve emotional wellbeing so that their conditions of life may be improved.

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We provide training for adults within families, social care, therapeutic and education settings to develop and enhance therapeutic skills for the support of emotionally vulnerable children and adults on account of their psychological, emotional, or social disabilities and circumstances. We liaise closely with other voluntary and statutory agencies also concerned with the assistance of persons in need in connection with any of the above. We can provide our training in person at venues and via online means. 

We provide a service to children aged between 3 and 18 years old and their families by providing creative therapies.

 

Our Service includes:

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• Art Therapy

• Play Therapy

• EMDR

• Filial Therapy (Family Intervention)

• Animal Assisted Play Therapy

• Therapeutic Life Story

• Counselling

• Therapeutic Assessments

• Training for families and professionals who work with vulnerable children

• Clinical Supervision for Professionals

• Consultations for families & Professionals

 

We have been funded to provide therapy for children who are adopted and those whose education is being affected through government funding such as Adoption Support Fund and by individual schools or Academies. However, we have found in our experience of working within the sector for the last 12 years  that there are many families seeking support for their child's mental health but still find it difficult to access.

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Many children and families fall outside the remit of statutory or government funding and provision and who have significant therapeutic needs but cannot access it. These groups include children with Special Education Needs, siblings of disabled children,  play based interventions for younger children and therapy for Looked After children. The families are often experiencing distress and concern about managing their child’s emotional difficulties without the necessary support.

There are many parents who feel isolated and unable to access the support they need. Often, they have sought help but have been rejected from provision within their area as they don’t fit a certain criterion. For example, CAMHS are a provision for children with mental health difficulties however the service is over stretched and have long waiting lists. Families often are refused a service as their child’s difficulties are not extreme enough to reach their thresholds. We want to reach children and provide the support they and their families need without their difficulties having to increase. The gap between need and provision in mental health services can lead to a child’s behaviours worsening and have longer-term damage. Children can feel that there is something wrong with them and they cannot be helped and if this continues into adolescent and adulthood many more mental health and social difficulties could develop.

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 In our work with families, we have identified a number of gaps in mental health provision:

 

·     Long waiting lists for CAMHS

·     The level of need having to be higher before being seen

·     Travelling to appointments in unfamiliar settings

·     Lack of suitably qualified therapists to provide creative based interventions

·     Lack of early intervention and longer term support

·     Lack of Creative and play based interventions for younger children and those who find talking therapies too difficult

·    Lack of funding for mental health support aimed at Looked After Children, Disabled children and the siblings of disabled children

 

We want to be able to reach children and families at the point of their request for help, to relieve the stress on the family and provide the support for the children in a timely way without the challenge families currently face contacting agencies, waiting for assessments and then to be placed on a long waiting list with no support in the meantime.

Within our communities we have found that there are few therapeutic services for children and families experiencing emotional, social, or behavioural support and those that are available are not always of a high quality and do not have the experienced staff that these children need

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Our Aims:

 

We have a passion to make long term changes and aim to relieve the mental and emotional stress of all children, young people and families.

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Our aim is to support families from our local communities, who may have experienced traumatic events including developmental trauma, attachment, loss, bereavement and other mental health distress. We aim to improve the life chances and relationships for long term well-being.

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We aim to support families, children and those working with families throughout Yorkshire.

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Our Goals for eQuiPT are:

 Our Successes

• To provide individual and group therapy to children, adolescents’ and adults who have experienced traumatic events such as developmental trauma, attachment, and other mental health distress.

• To use creative therapies that help children and young people

• To provide family-based Interventions for children who are experienced attachment, trauma, or other mental health distress

• To provide therapy for under-represented groups and those unable to access funded therapeutic work such as children with special needs, looked after children and kinship care (where they do not meet the ASF funding criteria)

• Through our individual private practices and eQUiPT Therapy Service, we have seen improvement in many children’s lives, when they have access to high quality therapeutic support. Children can grow in confidence, address their problems, and develop a strong sense of themselves as good people. Using creative ways to allow children to express their emotions without having to always talk about them can be so helpful. Children find it difficult to put their feelings into words and play and creative therapies can help them communicate and work through their emotions in their own way and at their own pace without facing the barriers of having to put into words their emotions and struggles.

• When working with children, young people, parents, teachers, and social care (when applicable), we see that helping the adults around the child understand the motivated behaviours and find new ways of responding that support the child, has long term benefits for the families lives and helps the child access their education more easily, improve social and emotional wellbeing.

• Since we began eQuiPT Therapy Service we have gained  highly qualified and experienced therapists/counsellor who have provided reliable and high quality interventions in both our premises and in school and community settings.