Time 4 Children is a small charity that provide emotional listening support to children in primary schools across the Mid-Sussex area.

We do this via a team of trained volunteer practitioners. Our volunteers come from all walks of life and share a passion for supporting children’s emotional wellbeing.

We train our volunteers on a 60 hour in person and online training course. They then go out to visit local schools and offer 1:1 support to children who are struggling from challenges in their lives.

Each child receives approximately 15 sessions of support, each session is one hour long. The sessions involve the volunteer practitioners using reflective listening and non-directive play techniques. They also take games, crafts, sand trays and small world figures along for the children to use.

The children are referred to Time 4 Children by school staff, family outreach workers and school nurses. The children are dealing with issues such as: family breakdown, bereavement, parental mental health problems, special educational needs and anxiety.

The sessions give children the time and space to explore their worries, fears, upsets or anxieties. There is a huge shortage of support for emotionally vulnerable children in the Mid Sussex area. Our hope is that by offering support to children when they are at primary school, we can help prevent them from going on to develop more serious mental health problems in later life.

Time 4 Children is completely self-funded, we need to raise money every year in order to continue to offer support. We do this via grant applications, fundraising events, donations and people kindly holding fundraising events of their own for us.

We do not charge schools or families anything to access our support service, it is completely free.

We are currently accepting applications for our September volunteer training course, please get in touch via email or our website for further information.

We have several events coming up later in the year including our wonderful winter fayre at Adastra Hall in Hassocks in November.

We always love to hear from anyone who would like to fundraise for us or any businesses that would like us to be their charity of the year.

For more information email: office@time4children.org.uk
Website: www.time4children.org.uk
Facebook: time4children