The Bungalow Partnership has a team of highly trained professionals including Play Therapists, Child and Adult Counsellors, Child Psychotherapists, Drama Therapists, Art Psychotherapists, Family Therapists and Emotional Wellbeing Practitioners.
We continue to welcome a number of volunteers and students including Social Workers, Counselling, Art, Child Psychotherapy and Drama students on placement from various universities. We aim to provide valuable placement opportunities for our students, to enhance their training and promote the Voluntary Sector as a place in which dynamic and creative opportunities exist to support the local community.
The Bungalow Partnership was established in September 2012 following a pilot funded by the Local Authority and two GP practices in Middlesbrough. We worked with 5 schools, supporting parents and pupils experiencing a range of difficulties which were having a detrimental effect on their progress in school. The Bungalow Partnership model began to attract interest resulting in the Middlesbrough Achievement Partnership providing a grant to assist in its expansion throughout the town.
Today we work to support over seventy schools across Middlesbrough, Stockton, Darlington, Billingham, Stokesley and further afield. The number of referrals continues to grow as we endeavour to provide targeted support to improve the emotional wellbeing of children, young people and families. As the charity grows, we have also developed a substantial training programme and our Care to Share Service, ensuring professionals are also supported emotionally and professionally in their work.
We support the emotional wellbeing of children, young people and families by providing a range of support aimed at improving mental health, emotional regulation and resilience. The Children’s Society (2008) reported that 10% of children and young people (aged 5-16yrs) have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem, yet 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health problems have not had appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age. Here at The Bungalow Partnership we hope to reach children at an early age and provide interventions that can be both preventative and healing in nature.
We support children therapeutically and to do that we use the voice and language of children which is creativity and play. We use creative therapies that work on a relational basis, and try to form a meaningful relationship with every school, parent and professional who is supporting each child we are working with. Our work is often in relation to developmental trauma and we use creative approches that support a neurosequential process that helps the brain and nervous system to recover and repair from those experiences.