Emotionally Informed Tutoring, Coaching, Counselling and Support for Children in Essex
Helping anxious, overwhelmed and neurodiverse children rebuild confidence, emotional wellbeing and reignite their love for learning.
- Supporting children with anxiety, autism, ADHD, PDA, SEMH and dyslexia
- Trusted by families, schools and professionals across Essex
- Qualified teachers, emotion coaches and counsellors
At Emotionally Healthy Minds, our passion is to nurture positive emotional health. We believe academic achievement and emotional wellbeing go hand in hand—and it doesn’t always have to be a struggle.
Giving children and young people the tools to understand, regulate and manage their emotions is key—and this is where we can help. After all, how can we expect children, or even adults, to excel academically if they’re struggling emotionally?
Everything we offer is built around four key strands:
Emotional Support
Compassionate, tailored Emotion Coaching and Counselling to help children understand their feelings and behaviours, empowering them to make positive changes. After all, emotionally healthy children become emotionally healthy adults.
Tutoring
Combining Academic Tutoring and Emotion Coaching to meet each child’s unique learning needs, helping them catch up, keep up and fall in love with learning all over again.
Parent and Carer Support and Consultancy
Providing parents and carers with practical tools and insights to confidently support their child’s emotional and educational growth at home—always with kindness and encouragement.
School Wellbeing Training and Consultancy
Partnering with schools, education professionals and organisations to deliver tailored training and consultancy, sharing best practices that foster emotionally healthy, thriving environments.
Who we Work With
To support children and young people, we work closely with:
- Parents and carers
- Schools
- Local Authorities
- Educational organisations
Who we support
We support children and young people who:
- feel anxious about school
- are struggling emotionally
- have lost confidence in learning
- have SEND needs such as autism, ADHD, PDA or dyslexia
- are emotionally overwhelmed
- feel misunderstood or unsupported
- are school avoidant
- need a more nurturing and holistic approach to education
Learning barriers are broken down, potential is unlocked and hope is restored
Why Families and schools choose Emotionally Healthy Minds
Many of the children we support:
- feel anxious or overwhelmed
- struggle in mainstream school environments
- have lost confidence in themselves
- feel misunderstood
- are masking emotional distress
- have experienced school-based stress or trauma
- are falling behind academically or losing their love of learning
At Emotionally Healthy Minds, we understand that children cannot thrive academically when they are struggling emotionally. That’s why our approach combines emotional support with education—helping children feel safe, understood and able to learn again.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can tutoring help anxious children?
When a child is anxious, their brain works hard just to feel safe, leaving little capacity for learning.
At Emotionally Healthy Minds, we take time to understand the child behind the behaviour. We build relationships intentionally, reduce pressure and adapt sessions to meet each child where they are emotionally as well as academically. This might look like learning through interests, movement breaks, games, creative activities, or simply giving a child time to feel comfortable again.
When a child feels emotionally safe and believed in, their nervous system settles and learning finally becomes possible again.
What Support Do You Offer for Neurodivergent Children with Autism and ADHD?
We support many children and young people with autism and ADHD, including those who may feel misunderstood, overwhelmed in school environments, emotionally exhausted, or unable to access traditional learning.
Our approach is flexible, child led, and emotionally informed. We understand that every child is different, so we adapt sessions around their needs, interests, sensory profile and communication style. Some children need movement and breaks, some need low demand approaches, some need routine and predictability, and others need space to regulate before learning can begin.
Many of the children we support have experienced anxiety, masking, burnout, school trauma, or low confidence, and our aim is always to reduce pressure rather than add to it.
We adapt sessions to the child, not the other way around. Above all, we meet your child with patience, empathy and genuine respect for how their brain works
Do you support children struggling with school attendance or EBSA?
Yes, we support many children and young people experiencing emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA), anxiety around school, burnout, or difficulties attending mainstream education.
For some children, school has become a place associated with stress, sensory overwhelm, or feeling unsafe. Our role is not to force children back into school before they are ready, but to gently rebuild trust, confidence, and enjoyment in learning again.
We provide both tutoring and wellbeing support for children who are out of school, on reduced timetables, awaiting specialist placements, home educated, as part of an EOTAS package or finding school environments difficult to manage.
What is emotionally informed tutoring?
Emotionally informed tutoring recognises that children cannot learn well when they feel anxious, overwhelmed, dysregulated or emotionally shut down. When a child’s nervous system is in survival mode, it is much harder for them to concentrate, remember information, take risks, make mistakes or believe they are capable.
At Emotionally Healthy Minds, we don’t focus only on academic outcomes. We take time to understand the child behind the behaviour, what helps them feel safe, what makes learning feel difficult and what they need in order to engage.
Our team build safe, trusting relationships and adapt sessions to reduce pressure, support emotional regulation and rebuild confidence alongside learning. This might include gentle encouragement, movement breaks, emotion coaching, flexible tasks, reassurance, or simply slowing things down so the child feels able to try.
It’s tutoring, but with empathy, brain science, emotional intelligence and confidence-building at the heart of everything we do.
What emotion coaching and counselling support do you offer?
Our coaching and counselling sessions help children and young people better understand their emotions, build confidence and feel supported through the challenges they may be facing.
Many of the children we support feel anxious, overwhelmed, emotionally dysregulated or stuck. Some struggle with low self esteem, school anxiety, friendships, behaviour, motivation or managing big emotions. Others may be neurodivergent or have experienced difficult school experiences that have affected how they feel about themselves and learning.
At Emotionally Healthy Minds, we know children are far more likely to thrive academically when they feel emotionally safe and regulated. Our coaching and counselling support is gentle, relational and tailored to the individual child. We focus on building safe, trusting relationships where children feel heard without pressure or judgement.
Sessions are interactive, flexible and child centred. Depending on the child’s age and needs, sessions may include conversations, games, creative activities, therapeutic approaches, emotional regulation strategies and practical coping tools. Some children feel most comfortable talking, while others open up more naturally through painting, drawing, clay work, colouring, Play Doh, movement or play based activities.
We support children to recognise emotions, understand themselves more deeply, process difficult feelings and develop healthier ways of coping, while rebuilding confidence and emotional wellbeing.
Do you work with schools and the Local Authority?
We regularly work alongside schools, SENCOs, Local Authorities and other professionals to support children with both their learning and emotional wellbeing.
We understand the pressures schools are under, so our aim is always to work collaboratively and provide consistent, child-centred support. This may include tutoring, counselling, emotion coaching, or tailored provision for children who are struggling within mainstream settings.
We can provide progress updates, emotional insights and support plans to help everyone work together around the child. Many schools and local authorities come to us when a child needs a more personalised, relational and emotionally aware approach to learning and wellbeing.
What makes Emotionally Healthy Minds different from traditional tutoring?
At Emotionally Healthy Minds, we understand that children cannot learn effectively when they feel anxious, overwhelmed, emotionally dysregulated, or unsafe. Traditional tutoring often focuses purely on academic progress, but our approach recognises that emotional wellbeing and learning are deeply connected.
We do not believe children are “lazy”, “difficult”, or “not trying.” We look beneath behaviour to understand what a child may be communicating through avoidance, shutdown, frustration, or disengagement.
Our sessions are relationship based, emotionally informed, and tailored to each individual child. We focus on building trust first, creating a safe environment where children feel accepted, understood, and free from pressure or shame. Once children feel emotionally safe, confidence and learning often begin to grow naturally.
We support many children with anxiety, autism, ADHD, emotionally based school avoidance, low confidence, school trauma, sensory needs, and gaps in education. Sessions are adapted flexibly around the child’s emotional and learning needs, rather than expecting the child to fit into a rigid approach.
Alongside tutoring, we also offer wellbeing and emotion coaching, helping children develop emotional awareness, regulation skills, resilience, and self-belief.
For many families, the difference is that we see the whole child, not just the academic outcome.
I’m struggling to support my child at home. Can you help me?
Our one-to-one parent consultations support families navigating neurodivergence, challenging behaviour, school avoidance and emotional overwhelm. We help parents better understand their child’s needs, reduce conflict at home and feel more confident responding to big emotions.
If you’re navigating a diagnosis, struggling with the EHCP process, or worried your child’s needs are not being properly supported within education, we offer guidance around SEN support, understanding your child’s rights, and advocating effectively within the system and support with EHCP applications and paperwork.
What types of support do you offer schools?
We provide tailored training and workshops for school staff, students, parents and carers, all centred around emotional wellbeing, mental health, and emotionally informed practice. Our training supports schools to better understand and respond to anxiety, emotional regulation, resilience, self-esteem and emotionally based school avoidance (EBSA).
We offer whole school INSET training, leadership and staff training, student workshops, parent and carer workshops, follow up training, and consultancy support. Sessions are practical, relational, and grounded in Emotion Coaching and current research around children’s emotional wellbeing.
Our student workshops are interactive and age appropriate, helping pupils develop emotional literacy, confidence, resilience, and self-regulation skills. We also provide transition workshops for Year 6 pupils preparing for secondary school.
For the second day in a row, we have something really exciting to announce...
We have a brand new blog section on our website.
We wanted to create a space where we could share more of what we know, talk about some of the things we see every day in our work with children and families, and offer practical advice around emotional wellbeing, education, anxiety, confidence, SEND, EBSA and much more.
We know so many parents spend hours searching the internet trying to find the information they need, so we wanted to start bringing more of that support together in one place for you.
We are still in the very early stages of building it, but with September rapidly approaching, we wanted to launch it now because there are three blogs in particular that James has written that may be really helpful:
- Back-to-School Anxiety: How to Help Your Child Feel Calm and Confident
- Starting Secondary School: How to Help Your Child Feel Confident About the Transition
- Starting Primary School: How to Prepare Your Child for Reception
There are more blogs already there too, and we’ll continue adding new articles regularly. I’ll be sharing more about these three next week, but if you fancy some weekend reading, please go ahead and have a look.
Have a read, have a browse and please share the page with another parent, carer or professional who might find it useful.
There is so much more already written, being written and ready to share with you. But this blog is for you, not for us, so it needs to be relevant and genuinely useful. If there is something you would like us to write about, please talk to us and let us know.
We’re listening.
www.emotionallyhealthyminds.com/blog
#BackToSchool #SchoolAnxiety #ChildrensMentalHealth #EmotionalWellbeing #emotionallyhealthyminds
We’ve got such exciting news…
We’re pleased to be expanding our counselling provision from September, both at our South Woodham Ferrers centre and within our local communities.
We now have more counselling spaces available during the school day and after school, giving children and young people greater access to support when they need it.
If you’re looking for counselling support for your child or young person, please get in touch to find out more or book a space. And please help us by sharing this with anyone you think may benefit from this support.
Thank you. Love Sarah x
Things we celebrate at Emotionally Healthy Minds that might never appear on a school report…
- Walking through the door when coming in feels really hard.
- Asking for help instead of giving up.
- Trying again after getting something wrong.
- Talking about a difficult feeling.
- Joining in when you would normally sit back.
- Accepting reassurance.
- Having a go at something new.
- Saying, “I don’t understand.”
- Staying for the whole session.
- Coming back the following week.
For some children, these things are HUGE.
Academic progress matters, of course it does. But sometimes, before a child can learn, they first need to feel safe enough to walk through the door, trust the adult sitting beside them and believe that getting something wrong is okay.
These are the wins we notice. And we celebrate every single one of them.
What is a win your child has had recently that might not appear on a school report? I’d love to know…
#EmotionallyHealthyMinds #ChildrensMentalHealth #EmotionalWellbeing #SENDSupport #EmotionallyInformed
Lauren D has been working on the 3x and 4x tables with one of her students, and this is a amazing example of what learning can look like at Emotionally Healthy Minds…
The LEGO characters lined up for a race to see who could make it to the finish line first!
Each correct answer meant another move forward, with plenty of times-table practice happening along the way.
Learning doesn’t always need to look like sitting at a desk with a worksheet. Sometimes, a bit of imagination (and a very determined LEGO character!) is all it takes to make practising those tricky facts much more fun.
#LearningThroughPlay #TimesTables #CreativeLearning #EmotionallyHealthyMinds #TutoringThatLooksDifferent
This week’s Weekly Win comes from Lauren D.
One of her students has been practising their fine motor skills by giving these gentlemen a fabulous haircut!
They carefully cut along straight, wavy and zigzag lines, building control, coordination and confidence along the way.
Such a simple, creative activity, but so many important skills being developed.
Well done to Lauren and her student!
#WeeklyWin #PhonicsFun #LearningThroughPlay #YearOnePhonics #HandEyeCoordination #CreativeLearning #TutoringSupport #EmotionallyInformedEducation #EmotionallyHealthyMinds
In preparation for the EPHA meetings we attended in June we had a new schools banner printed and I’ve just realised I never properly showed you all.
The statistic on it is one we desperately wish were not true.
One in five children aged 8 to 16 in England had a probable mental disorder. That is 20.3% of children in this age group.
To put that into perspective, that is approximately six children in a typical class of 30.
Across a two-form-entry school with around 420 pupils, the equivalent proportion would be approximately 84 children.
And look at how quickly the figures have changed.
In 2017, it was around one in nine children aged 8 to 16.
By 2020, it had increased to one in six.
By 2023, it was one in five.
These are not just statistics. They represent children sitting in our classrooms who may be trying to learn while experiencing anxiety, distress, emotional regulation difficulties or other barriers that those around them cannot always see.
This is exactly why emotionally informed education matters.
Children need adults who understand that feeling safe, understood and connected is not separate from learning. For many children, it is what makes learning possible.
Our new banner will be coming with us to schools, conferences and events as we continue sharing that message.
Because emotional wellbeing should never be an afterthought in education.
#EmotionallyHealthyMinds #EmotionallyInformedEducation #ChildrensMentalHealth #Schools #SEND #EBSA #TeacherTraining #EmotionalWellbeing #Education #EssexSchools
Finally. Some sense coming from above.
For years, our education system has been built around expecting all children to fit into the same model. But we know that model is not built for everyone.
The article describes our current education system as a “straitjacket” and argues that too many children are being made to feel like failures simply because their strengths are practical, creative or technical rather than traditionally academic.
When so many young people with SEND, anxiety, EBSA or different strengths are struggling to fit within one model of education, I believe the question is not always, “How do we make the child cope better?” We have got to ask, “What needs to change around the child?”
This is not about lowering expectations. It is about recognising that ambition, success and learning can look different for different children.
So many children are being made to feel that they are failing, when the system itself may simply not be meeting their needs.
What do you think of this article? I would love to hear from both parents and educators.
#SEND #EBSA #EmotionallyInformedEducation #AlternativeProvision #emotionallyhealthyminds
Our home ed family sessions are continuing for the first three weeks in August.
Looking for a space for your children to have fun and socialise with others?
Want to talk to other home-ed families, share ideas and support one another?
We’ve had lots of fun over the last few weeks - making slime, paper flowers that unfold when placed in water, big bubbles and making rainbows.
Join James and Jess for some summer Home Ed fun Mondays from 12:30pm-2:30pm at New Life Church, Clements Green Lane, South Woodham Ferrers, CM3 5JP.
£6 for one child
£9 for 2+ children
Sign up here to come and pay on the day:
https://docs.google.com/forms/u/1/d/e/1FAIpQLSeV4_2qLEbFfWgiSJYjqi_9CRDaSWbBNUcEqrg3iFYZ83ENFA/viewform
We would love to see you there!
#HomeEdSupport #SouthWoodhamFerrers #EssexFamilies #SummerActivities #emotionallyhealthyminds
How do you help a reluctant writer begin to enjoy learning again?
You start with something they already love.
Rob created and assembled this incredible Star Wars village and used it with one of his students, using their interests to make writing feel exciting and far less daunting.
This is what personalised tutoring can look like. It is not about lowering expectations or avoiding learning. It is about finding the way in…
The time, care and creativity our team put into supporting their students will never stop amazing me.
#EmotionallyHealthyMinds #EmotionallyInformedEducation #TutoringSupport #SENDSupport
