Through the Summer term,  the vast majority of pupils will continue to be learning at home. Encouragingly Birmingham Children’s Partnership will be laying out their growing offer of local and city-wide COVID-19 support for children and families, beginning today with Kooth.

Kooth is being provided now as a free, safe and anonymous service to support young people’s emotional and mental health in Birmingham. Because young people have suddenly had exams cancelled, transition arrangements thrown up in the air and are dealing with the impact of COVID-19 on their loved ones this is important. The new service was successfully launched yesterday for young people from year 6, aged 11 up to 25. The full offer, including online self-referral can be accessed at www.kooth.com.
Kooth is linked into the wider mental health support from Forward Thinking Birmingham and offers:

• Online mental health counselling and chat services from midday to 10pm during the week, and 6pm to 10pm at weekends
• Peer to peer support through moderated discussion forums
• Self-care tools and resources to build resilience
• Early response to and identification of emotional wellbeing and mental health problems
• And there are no waiting lists, referrals or thresholds to access the service