Winter Newsletter 2016

Paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can improve your mental wellbeing.

Some people call this awareness “mindfulness”.

Professor Mark Williams, former director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre, says that “Most of us have issues that we find hard to let go and mindfulness can help us deal with them more productively…Awareness of this kind also helps us notice signs of stress or anxiety earlier and helps us deal with them better.”

Valley Trust supports all our Counsellors and Supervisors with CPD by offering free workshops and training and we enjoyed attending a recent Mindfulness Workshop facilitated by Dr Alison Armstrong.

Alison has spent many years practising mindfulness, meditation, and yoga.  She has completed extensive psychological research on mindfulness to PhD level, which specifically enabled her to understand the benefits and processes involved when learning mindfulness.  Our Counsellors found great benefit in learning more about this subject and the different ways in which they could incorporate Mindfulness into their own lives and the therapy that they offer to the children who they counsel.

Mindfulness is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a way to prevent depression in people.

Paying more attention to the present moment – to your own thoughts and feelings, and to the world around you – can improve your mental wellbeing.

Some people call this awareness “mindfulness”.

DBS Update Service

In line with Government guidelines, we make sure all our Counsellors and Supervisors have an up to date DBS issued within the last 3 years.  However, we are now beginning to encourage registration to the DBS Update Service.

What is the DBS update service?

For a small annual fee of just £13 (free for volunteers) you can have your DBS certificate kept up-to-date (on-line) and take it with you from role to role, within the same workforce, where the same type and level of check is required.  By joining the new service you could save yourself a lot of time and money depending upon how many DBS checks you have needed in the past.

New Appointments at Valley Trust:

Ben is the Chief Operating Officer and Company Secretary of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA) the ombudsman for student complaints in England and Wales.  Ben’s appointment, with his vast experience in academia, is seen as a positive asset to the Management Board and will contribute to expanding the service we provide to counselling within the schools environment.  As with all the Trustees the position is unpaid with their time and dedication provided for the benefit of children in need.