Liz's story: receiving counselling from the helpline during lockdown

Liz has worked with children for thirty years, starting off teaching young people in prisons in Cardiff and then in schools working with children with challenging behaviour and additional educational needs. She went through a very difficult time during lockdown and didn’t have her usual support network at school to help. She called our helpline and just one session of counselling reminded her of the tools she had to face things and of her resilience. Now she says to anyone thinking they might need a bit of support, just pick up the phone.

Every child is someone’s little girl or boy and I believe every child deserves to learn, no matter what difficulties they face. I’ve worked in schools for 21 years, usually with children with mild learning disabilities and challenging behaviour, and I use trauma and attachment driven teaching methods to give the children the best possible chance. I work in a very deprived area and we do have huge challenges but teaching gives me an opportunity to learn everyday and we’ve got a really good team at my school.

The things we know now about neuroscience are amazing and we have lots of tools in the box to offer the children - we use mindfulness, breathing, yoga, therapeutic play, and you can see the difference it makes. It does need a huge amount of energy though and I practice yoga everyday to make sure I look after myself, it’s essential if I’m going to be able to work with the children. 

In the middle of lockdown, when I couldn’t really connect with school colleagues as we weren’t going in, I had a lot going on. My father in law had died and my husband was really struggling. Our daughter had gone to university, my parents' health was declining, the dog we’d had for 15 years died, and unsurprisingly this all took its toll on my marriage.

I thought, with all of that going on, I’ve got to do something to look after myself. So I did what I would have advised someone else to do and I called the Education Support helpline. I knew about them already and have done for years, encouraging staff at my school to use their great services.

I rang at 6 in the morning because I couldn’t sleep. The man I spoke to was really responsive and supportive and arranged a counselling session for me immediately. I knew I had to be able to support my husband and the counselling was like first aid. It reminded me of what I knew and the tools I had, but at the time couldn’t quite see them because of what was happening to me. I felt empowered to talk things through and reminded of my strategies to support myself and others.

Things are much better for me, my husband, and generally now. Of course lockdown made things harder and it was wonderful that the offer of more counselling including marriage guidance was always there from Education Support.

It’s not a sign of weakness to ask for help and you wouldn’t think twice about contacting someone if you hurt your back. Often, these are temporary things that we can all get through if we reach out, rather than letting things get worse and worse. I’d say to anyone who might be finding things a bit difficult, pick up the phone, you’ve got nothing to lose.

It’s a joy to be in school with the children and our great staff team but you don’t get supervision like you do in other sectors though, so it can be easy to take home the trauma the children experience. I run a weekly coffee morning before school starts on Fridays for colleagues to connect and chat before the day starts. It's important to keep people talking and connecting and the helpline is such a good service. I’m really grateful for it and the big difference it made in my life at a really tough time.