Alice’s story

We’re into week five of this year’s Ops Fundraising Challenge and colleagues up and down the country have been busy raising money for Action for Children.

The Ops Challenge is your opportunity to raise both awareness of mental health issues affecting young people and money to enable children across the UK get the support they need from Action for Children’s internationally acclaimed mental health initiative, the Blues Programme.

Alice is one of the students who completed the programme in her school. Previously she had been noticeably more withdrawn and less engaged at home and when she started the programme, she was one of the quieter members of the group, who found it hard to share her thoughts and feelings.

Throughout the programme Alice gradually opened up and during the final two sessions, she began to speak about the stress she was feeling about her exams and what her future might hold. This type of stress can be detrimental for young people like Alice and, if not addressed, has the potential to lead to more serious mental health issues, escalating the depression and anxiety that she was already feeling.

The Blues Programme helped Alice to verbalise her worries and the negative thoughts she was experiencing. It helped her come up with practical response plans or positive counter thoughts for how she would deal with them, so that they would not affect her so much. Without this support she would be more likely to become isolated from her friends and family and her worries and stress would start to impact her ability to complete her school work.

After the programme ended her mum told Action for Children: ‘Since completing the programme Alice has been so much calmer and more focused, taking control of situations instead of being overwhelmed most of the time.

‘Thank you to the Blues Programme for giving my daughter this wonderful opportunity, I think all teenagers should get this support.’