Education should be more than the pursuit of academic success—it should nurture well-rounded, emotionally resilient individuals. Schools should serve as environments where every young person is supported to develop self-belief, confidence, and pride. Yet, for many students today, the reality is far from this ideal. Exclusionary policies, punitive cultures, and a lack of focus on emotional well-being leave too many children and young people alienated, anxious, or struggling to cope. It is time to reimagine our schools as spaces that prioritize mental health, emotional and interpersonal growth, and inclusivity.
The Therapy and Social Change (TaSC) Network is initiating a campaign to call on the UK government to ensure that, by the time young people leave secondary school, they are equipped with the emotional and interpersonal skills to navigate adulthood. We are advocating for an education system that is compassionate, equitable, and designed to meet the diverse needs of all students.
A Call for Emotionally Healthy and Nurturing Schools in the UK
This event draws together leaders in the mental health professions field, along with young people, educators, and parents, to address these questions:
- What have mental health professionals and their organisations been doing, to date, to support emotional health and wellbeing in schools?
- What ‘asks’ do we have of policy-makers and government to make schools a place of emotional health and wellbeing?
- How can mental health professionals work more closely and effectively together to make emotionally nurturing schools a reality?
- What should education, most fundamentally, be about?
Course Content
Organisation
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Presenter
Cassandra Geisel (she/her) is an MBACP therapist working in private practice and is completing two placements as part of her further training. She sits as the Chair of the Board of Trustees for The New Normal Charity, promoting equality and transparency, pushing for accessible bereavement support for all. Previous work in community-based suicide prevention, running co-production sessions and mental health workshops. Committed to societal transformation through system change and mental health advocacy.
Claudia emigrated from Bolivia to Britain in 2003 and has lived and raised her family in Hackney, London since then.
She is passionate about socio economic independence and the impact hardship and exclusion have on mental health and personal development. Claudia has worked fighting for community cohesion through trade unionism demanding workers rights, women’s rights, migrants rights and wider communities rights to access education and health.
Claudia has passionately led campaigns for mental health to be our human right, most recently in her role as elected Councillor and former Mental Health Champion for the London Borough of Hackney she achieved the adoption of the Mental Health a Human Right for All motion making it the very first local authority in the country and probably the world to adopt a UN High Commissioner’s recommendation on mental health and human rights.
Claudia is a longstanding trade unionist, former Treasurer and current member of UVW trade union, a migrant led union that has achieved great successes and insourcing victories for migrant workers across London. She started defending workers rights after realising that many workers, including herself, experience racism, exploitation and modern slavery.
The transformative social reforms that have lifted millions out of poverty in her native socialist Bolivia underpins the mission vision and values for her work as a community representative and advocate for universal care for all.
In 2018, Claudia founded a free counselling project that has provided over hundreds of free therapy to families and young people across East London. She supports bereaved families of young people lost to youth violence.
As part of the circular economy Claudia feels so passionate about, she believes exchanging knowledge is part what our circular economy is about, in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Claudia founded Comunidad Latin America UK in the hope of supporting Latin American communities in the UK at a time of the worst global health crisis to ensure those who did not speak English were not further socially disadvantaged.
Comunidad Latin America UK advocates for sharing of knowledge that can lift communities up and improve their socio economic opportunities and future prospects, from registering to vote, applying and securing housing, improving credit rating, learning about pensions, renters rights and access to health and education. To date there have been four events held gathering close to two thousand people in attendance (in person and online) and has joined forces with organisations from across the UK such as No Child Left Behind, Doctors of the World, Positive East, Migrant Democracy Project, Chagas Hub, LAWA, IWGB trade union, Unison, Money Hub Hackney, Hackney Council and more.
President-elect of the British Psychological Society due to take up Presidency in July 2024. Has been leading on the BPS campaign urging the government to restore investment in mental health support for NHS and Social care staff. Currently working on Psychology matters asking all political parties develop and deliver policies using a psychological approach. Previously Chair of the BPS Division of Clinical Psychology.Consultant Lead Clinical Psychologist and Head of Clinical Psychology in Central London Community (CLCH) NHS Trust. Clinical expertise working in services for adults with learning disabilities, autistic spectrum disorders and forensic services.
Emma Garavini is a Senior Youth Involvement Officer at The McPin Foundation. At McPin, we believe mental health research is done and made best when people with lived experience of mental health issues and involved in the research itself to advise, guide and shape the research.
Emma is based in the Young People’s Team and works on several projects ensuring the voices of young people (aged 13-28) with lived experience of mental health issues are meaningfully involved in research. Her projects and work with young people cover the topics of: self-harm/suicidality, social media usage and influencers, young people who use and attend therapy/counselling and more. She also works on engagement with schools and youth organisations to involve young people with all experiences and demographics in mental health research.
Jo Holmes is the Children, Young People and Families Lead based within the Policy Team at BACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy). Jo’s background was initially youth work, leading youth participation health-based programmes, she later retrained as a person-centred counsellor, developing a counselling service in a secondary school. Jo has worked with children and young people spanning over 30 years in a range of local authority, school, third sector and health settings. Jo now campaigns for free at the point-of-access counselling for children, young people and young adults (up to the age of 25) as well as paid work for the counselling profession. Jo is also the safeguarding lead for BACP.
Jocelyne Quennell has worked in the field of the arts therapies, psychotherapy and counselling since the early 1990’s with all ages and stages of life. She has contributed continuously to the development of standards of education, training and practice in the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP), where she was made a Fellow.
She is former Principal of the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education (IATE) and was responsible for a decade for the MA in Integrative Arts Psychotherapy. She has been a leader in developing inclusive therapeutic and wellbeing services in education.
Jocelyne is Director of the Wellbeing Faculty at IATE, where she has pioneered courses in humanistic and integrative therapeutic counselling, key-working, mentoring, creative group and community wellbeing which are validated by the University of East London.
She is committed to enhancing quality and increasing access to creative and relational therapeutic approaches. This includes providing education and training for a wider range of representative role models for children and young people. She is currently working with Oasis Nurture which is implementing therapeutic approaches in schools.
I have been facilitating in Counselling & Psychotherapy programmes in the UK for more than 10 years.
I am currently the director at Temenos Education and have a private practice where I offer online Psychotherapy and Supervision using video and chat communication platforms along with virtual environments. I am also the co-founder of onlinevents which has grown to be the world’s largest library of online video and audio content with instant certification and a learning log.
I am also a past chair of the Association for Counselling & Therapy Online (ACTO) and have served for 6 years on the board of the World Association for Person Centered & Experiential Psychotherapy & Counselling. My passion to bring online learning into the field of Counselling & Psychotherapy has also led to the development of online experiential learning within the Temenos programme, facilitating the exposure of Temenos students to external tutors who are located in different parts of the world. Along with the inclusion of experiential learning of online Counselling & Psychotherapy for Temenos students so that they qualify with knowledge and practice in online communication and relationship.
Jummy has lived experience of mental health problems and navigating the UK education system. This led to Jummy developing a passion to support others that have experienced mental health problems which I later joined as a member of the McPin’s Young People’s Advisory group which I have used my lived experience to influence and shape research projects to be reflective of the young people’s needs. Jummy’s lived experience encouraged and motivated her to pursue a career within mental health and to study at university where she completed a BSc Psychology Degree in 2021 and secured a 2:1.
Since Jummy’s Psychology degree she has worked in mental services for three years before an unplanned career break. Jummy started her career as a Senior Community Engagement Practitioner for a charity where she supported people to access community resources such as activities and groups through signposting or attending groups together.
Jummy then attempted to train as a Trainee Psychological Wellbeing Practitioner (PWP) for a year where she carried out initial assessments and coached clients in Guided Self Help (GSH), which is brief Cognitive Behavioural Therapy that is aimed to enable clients to become their own therapist through practising tools and techniques from session materials.
Since being unable to complete the training due to personal and other reasons. During Jummy’s employment break she has pursued interests and hobbies including baking and travelling and other activities and has been working on personal and career development. Jummy also hopes to start soon as a Support Worker in the NHS.
Jyles is the CEO of the NCPS, and is particularly passionate about the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people. He is a vocal advocate for placing counselling & psychotherapy at the heart of the wider mental health landscape, and ensuring that practitioners are recognised for the work that they do. While not a practitioner himself, Jyles has spent a significant amount of time on the periphery of the profession, and has long supported practitioners in their work, championing the need for early intervention and relational support in schools and their wider communities.
Mick Cooper is an internationally recognised author, trainer, and consultant in the field of humanistic, existential, and pluralistic therapies. He is a Chartered Psychologist, and Professor of Counselling Psychology at the University of Roehampton.
Mick has facilitated workshops and lectures around the world, including New Zealand, Lithuania, and Florida.
Mick’s books include Existential Therapies (Sage, 2017), Working at Relational Depth in Counselling and Psychotherapy (Sage, 2018), The Handbook of Person-Centred Psychotherapy and Counselling (Palgrave, 2013), and Integrating Counselling and Psychotherapy: Directionality, Synergy, and Social Change (Sage, 2019).
His latest work is Psychology at the Heart of Social Change: Developing a Progressive Vision of Society (Policy Press, 2023)
Mick Cooper is also the editor of The Tribes of the Person-Centred Nation (PCCS, 2024) and co-editor of The Handbook of Person-Centred Psychotherapy and Counselling (3rd ed, 2024).
Mick’s principal areas of research have been in shared decision-making/personalising therapy, and counselling for young people in schools.
In 2014, Mick received the Carmi Harari Mid-Career Award from Division 32 of the American Psychological Association. He is a Fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the Academy of Social Sciences.
His latest work is Psychology at the Heart of Social Change: Developing a Progressive Vision of Society (Policy Press, 2023)
The book looks at the interface between therapy and social justice. The blurb for the book reads: ‘Over the past century, psychotherapy – and its parent discipline, psychology – has built up a vibrant, nuanced and highly practical understanding of human wellbeing and distress. This book describes a progressive political approach that integrates insights from the psychotherapeutic and psychological domain, moving us from a politics of blame to a politics of understanding. In this vision of society – surrounded by a culture of radical acceptance – all individuals can live rich and fulfilling lives. We need those shaping our political landscape to understand psychological needs and processes more deeply to enhance our ability to work with others in a spirit of collaboration, dialogue and respect.’
Lynne is Professor of Counselling and Mental Health at York St John University, York, UK. She is a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) Accredited and Registered Counsellor and Psychotherapist, and an honorary fellow of the association. She is a trained supervisor of practitioners working within the counselling, mental health and helping professions. Originally trained as a mental health nurse, Lynne has been a key player in the counselling and mental health fields for many years, contributing at local, regional, national, and international levels. Lynne has a leadership role in mental health transformation in York, working with the health and mental health system partners to bring about co-designed and coproduced change.
Lynne’s current research areas include public mental health, domestic and relationship abuse and trauma, pluralistic approaches to ethics for the counselling professions, group interventions for bereavement and loss, review and evaluation of standardised mental health measures, and evaluation of the provision of online counselling. Lynne has published books on ethics in practice and research papers on multiple aspects of work in the counselling professions. Lynne is working with coeditor Professor Andrew Reeves on an Ethics in Action series for Routledge and is lead author for the series header book, Navigating Relational Ethics in Day-to-Day Practice (co-author Professor Andrew Reeves; book is in production and due for publication in September 2024).
The Therapy and Social Change (TaSC) Network is a broad affiliation of people interested in exploring the interface between therapeutic ideas and practices and social justice perspectives and actions. We are interested both in the ways that counselling and psychotherapy can be practiced with social justice concerns in mind (for instance, tackling unconscious biases in the consulting room), and also in the ways that therapeutic principles and practices can be extended out to the wider social realm (for instance, developing social and emotional literacy in schools).
