Emotional Health

Cardiff Youth Service’s response to emotional health is supporting young people, colleagues, schools and other professionals to identify healthy coping strategies to minimise the need for specialist mental health support.

This can be done through raising awareness of emotional health, delivering group sessions with young people and signposting to support services.

The iCare programme is a self-care activity that aims to help support you with your emotional health and wellbeing. This includes an iCare box, filled with activities and gifts around the 5 senses of your body (these are sight, sound, smell, touch and taste). The purpose of the box is to help you begin to look at what self-care means to you and how you can rebuild your box for when you need a little bit of extra TLC. You can refill it with anything that helps you feel better and this will be unique to you.

Alongside this, there is a self-care journal with activities to support you in recognising your strengths and personal goals, with some helpful mindfulness and self-regulating activities for when you are feeling overwhelmed. Give them a try and see what works best for you – add these to your iCare box to remind you what helps you!

Depending on how you are feeling, you are able to try this iCare programme out on your own, or with a trusted adult such as a Youth Worker. The most important part is beginning your journey into building your own self-care toolkit to help you when times are a little bit tough!

If you’re interested in learning more about the iCare programme, please feel free to contact us

A whole Service approach

• Staff training around Brief Solution Focused, Motivational Interviewing, Mental Health First Aid, Suicide Training, Mindfulness, CBT/Anxiety etc.