A MENTAL health services practitioner will offer workshops and therapy sessions in the town centre, in a bid to take pressure off mainstream services.

Susan Kaur, a qualified therapist who has been working at a practitioner for four years, has decided to hold sessions at Abda Cafe in Crown Street, starting Wednesday, August 8.

She said: “In my current role I am finding more and more children being referred to CAMHS [the NHS’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services] by schools and GPs.

“Due to the sudden influx and pressures on all these services I have decided to tackle the main difficulties all children are facing on a day-to-day basis, which are anger, anxiety and emotional regulation.

“Autism and ADHD assessment centres have seen a sudden rise of diagnoses over the last five years. With my knowledge and experience working with these children I will be delivering individual workshops for children and adults too.

“ADHD and autistic children usually struggle to manage their behaviour due to not understanding their emotions – all behaviour is communicating something. It is our responsibility as parents and professionals to listen to what is not ‘said with words’ and understand it so we can ‘enable’ children to learn how to be the best human being they can be – happy and resilient enough to transition into adulthood .”

Workshops and therapy sessions on offer will focus on art therapy and mindfulness, anger management, anxiety management, emotional resilience, CBT therapy, and one-to-one intervention.

The sessions will run in age-appropriate hour-long blocks between 9am and 5pm on a Wednesday.

n For more information on the workshops on offer, or to book your place, call Susan on 07715802776