Children’s Mental Health Crisis: Meet the Mum of Two Helping Thousands of Children Stuck on NHS Waiting Lists
LANCASHIRE, UK 3rd July 2023 - After suffering from anxiety for 22 years, Jenny Chesworth, 35, founded the Be Happy Hub, a mental health resource centre for children.
With The Guardian recently reporting an ‘explosion’ in children’s mental health referrals, and YoungMinds spearheading the #EndTheWait
campaign, we are in the midst of a children’s mental health crisis. Referrals for professional support for under 18s has increased by 76% since 2019.
But one mum is offering a helping hand to children struggling in the UK who are stuck on waiting lists and who are being turned away for support.
Jenny Chesworth, 35, founded the Be Happy Hub in 2021, a mental health resource centre, after experiencing anxiety herself since a child. It now has thousands of members, including parents, teachers and NHS professionals.
The Hub boasts fun, engaging and printable resources for children to learn about mental health and to explore their thoughts and emotions.
Jenny says: “I’ve struggled with anxiety and panic attacks since I was a child that were never diagnosed or treated and led to a break down in my late twenties. By not supporting children now, we are walking into a future epidemic.”
“We have a responsibility to help our children now, we have the knowledge and now we have the tools and resources.”
Jenny, who worked for a mental health charity for five years before launching the Hub and has a clinical psychologist to advise on her more support-based resources, is hoping to get the word out about her Hub to help more children across the UK.
“I’m hoping to help parents understand how important it is to help children understand their thoughts and emotions and develop coping tools. My son developed anxiety age just 3, it is never too early to learn.”
Jenny launched the Be Happy Hub after her son, Zach, now 6, developed anxiety during the pandemic. She began creating tools and activities to help him at home and after a year they had created 150 resources together.
Since launching the Hub, Jenny has gone onto work with the NHS, bereavement charities, domestic abuse charities, schools, hospices and more.
“The main aim of our Hub is to be low cost and accessible, I would say we are the cheapest of our kind – in fact, I would even go as far to say that there is nothing out there like us at the moment!”
The Be Happy Hub currently boasts over 800 resources for children age 0-11 with teen resources set to launch soon. Activities cover everything from anxiety to Tourette’s, toilet anxiety, EBSA (school avoidance), grief, separation anxiety and much more. There are also free eGuides and resources.
Jenny often thinks about how different her life would have been had she received
professional support – or even had some of her resources to hand - after her first panic attack. “I wish I had been taught these tools and techniques when I was younger. Instead, I was taken from doctor to doctor who mostly labelled me a hypochondriac. I really feel that if just one person had said, this is what is happening to you, this is why and this is what you can do, that would have been life changing.”
Jenny now manages her anxiety extremely well and her son, Zach, is thriving too. “He’s even joined a football team,” Jenny says, “That wouldn’t have been possible three years ago!”
You can find out more about the Be Happy Hub here.
Distributed by https://pressat.co.uk/