• Children and young people who have Place2Be counselling are building protective factors against poor mental health.
• Most children and young people are showing improved mental health after accessing Place2Be’s counselling service.
• Children and young people with behaviour difficulties are showing improved behaviour following counselling with Place2Be.
• Place2Be is helping parents and carers support their child's mental health and feel more confident managing challenging behaviour.
• Place2Be is supporting children and young people while they are waiting for treatment with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

Children and young people who have Place2Be counselling are building protective factors against poor mental health.

• For the measures that we collect post-intervention which relate to known risk factors (i.e., peer problems) and protective factors (i.e., leisure activities, self-regulation, and school engagement and attitudes), our evidence suggests that children and young people show improvements following Place2Be’s one-to-one counselling.
• Analysis of routine data collection on the teacher reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) shows that, following one-to-one counselling, 45% of primary school aged and 42% secondary school aged pupils show improvement in peer problems (48% and 49% respectively on parent reports).
• Of those with mental health difficulties in the severe range before counselling, 65% of primary-aged and 60% of secondary-aged pupils showed clinical recovery on peer problems, teacher-reports (48% and 43% for parent reports)
• Of those starting in the severe range for the impact their mental health difficulties were having on their friendships, SDQ self-reports show that this improved for 78% of children and young people following counselling (66% on teacher-reports and 75% parent reports).
• Of those who started in the severe range for the impact their mental health difficulties were having on their leisure activities, SDQ self-reports show that this improved for 86% of children and young people following counselling (78% on parent-reports).
• In 2019/20, approximately half of children and young people who attended one-to-one counselling showed improvement in self-regulation (our measure of self-regulation falls into three subscales – 48% improved in emotional regulation, 48% improved in confidence, and 52% improved in independence).
• See also engagement, which demonstrates Place2Be’s association with improvements in pupils’ engagement and attitudes to learning.

Most children and young people show improved mental health after accessing Place2Be’s counselling service.

• Analysis of our routinely collected SDQ data shows that attending one-to-one counselling is associated with both a reduction and a resolution of mental health difficulties.
• In 2020/2021, 63% of primary school-aged children and 57% of secondary-aged students showed improvement in mental health following one-to-one counselling (teacher reported SDQ total difficulties).
• For those who had mental health difficulties in the severe range before counselling, 75% of primary-aged and 77% secondary-aged, showed improvement after counselling.
• For those who had mental health difficulties in the severe range before counselling, 49% of primary-aged and 55% of secondary-aged children and young people showed clinical recovery.
• There is also improvement in the impact that these mental health difficulties are having in the classroom and on learning.

Children and young people with behaviour difficulties show improved behaviour following counselling with Place2Be.

• Analysis of our routine data collection on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) suggests that children and young people show improved behaviour following one-to-one counselling (2020/2021).
• 37% of primary school aged children and 27% of secondary school aged students showed improvement in teacher-reported conduct problems (49% and 40% on parent reports) following one-to-one counselling.
• 49% primary-aged and 44% secondary-aged showed improvement in hyperactivity (52% and 49% on parent reports) following one-to-one counselling.
• 45% primary-aged and 42% secondary-aged show improvement in peer problems (48% and 49% on parent reports) following one-to-one counselling.
• When looking at children and young people who started in the severe difficulties range of the SDQ subscales, teacher reports suggest that 45% of primary-aged and 50% of secondary-aged showed clinical recovery in conduct problems (47% and 51% respectively on parent reports) following one-to-one counselling.
• 41% of primary-aged and 52% secondary-aged showed clinical recovery in hyperactivity (41% and 40% on parent reports) following one-to-one counselling.
• 65% of primary-aged children and 60% of secondary-aged young people showed clinical recovery in peer problems (48% and 43% on parent reports) following one-to-one counselling.
• Behaviour improvement is also reflected in the reduced school suspensions in the academic year that counselling took place (link to school suspension section).

Place2Be is helping parents and carers support their child's mental health and feel more confident managing challenging behaviour.

• Involving parents in primary school pupil’s counselling at Place2Be (I.e., Personalised Individual Parenting Training; PIPT) has been found to improve children’s mental health (SDQ).
• Importantly, this includes improvements in children’s conduct problems (parent reports suggest that conduct problems improved for 54% of children), which are known to be particularly difficult to treat in individual counselling alone.
• Before PIPT, most parents felt that their children’s difficulties were interfering with homelife (78%). Following PIPT, 59% of parents indicated improvement in homelife interference.
• Parent’s/carer’s perceptions of their parenting efficacy and confidence significantly increased following PIPT (total scores on The Brief Parental Self Efficacy Scale; BPSES).
• Improvements were seen across all statements of parenting efficacy and confidence, in terms of knowing what to do to support their child and being able to do these things, as well as their confidence that the things they do makes a difference to their child’s behaviour.
• Before PIPT, only half (51%) of parents felt that they knew what they needed to do to manage their child’s behaviour. This increased to 80% after PIPT.
• While we cannot infer causality, these findings suggest that during PIPT, parents learnt new strategies to support their child and gained confidence in carrying them out, which in turn could be improving children's wellbeing.

Place2Be supports children and young people while they are waiting for treatment with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS).

• In 2020/2021, 8% of cases referred to Place2Be’s service were on the waiting list for CYPMHS10 (12% of cases had CYPMHS involved in the family).
• In 25% of cases (170 children) where a safeguarding concern had been raised, Place2Be was supporting the child or young person while they were waiting to be seen by CYPMHS.
• In Place2Be schools, mental health support is more readily accessible than it is via the NHS for most children and young people. Our self-referral service, Place2Talk, ensures that all children and young people in Place2Be schools have a mental health professional who they can talk to without having to be put on a long waiting list for mental health support. In 2021/2022, 68,871 Place2Talk sessions took place across our schools, supporting 33,328 children and young people.
• Analysis undertaken by collaborators at Kings College and SLAM demonstrated that having Place2Be’s counselling provision in schools did not increase referral rates into CYPMHS (Grant et al., 2021). In combination with the known effectiveness of Place2Be’s counselling, this suggests that having a school-based counselling service does not lead to a flood of referrals to CYPMHS, but instead is likely to be doing well at treating mental health challenges within schools.