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.
We are so excited to be launching our new Home Education Group at Emotionally Healthy Minds.
Whether your child is newly home educated or you have been on this journey for a while, we would love to welcome you. Please do share with any home educating families you know who may be interested.
The timing also ties in beautifully with our farm sessions, so why not make a full day of it with us.
To find out more or book a space, please get in touch.
#HomeEducation #HomeEdUK #HomeSchooling #HomeEducators #AlternativeEducation #NeurodivergentLearners #EmotionallyHealthyMinds #SENDSupport #HomeEdCommunity #EssexFamilies
Many children struggle to understand and manage emotions because nobody ever showed them how.
Young children often mirror our behaviour. Older children watch how we cope, respond and speak to ourselves, even when they pretend they are not listening. Ultimately, children learn how to manage their emotions through relationships, connection and watching others around them.
Even though my children are older now, I still talk openly about my emotions and what I need to help myself through them. You can do this with children of any age, in a way that feels appropriate for them.
�That might sound like:
“I’m really tired, I need an early night later.”�“I’m feeling overwhelmed, I’m going to go for a walk.”�“I’m feeling sad today, can I have a cuddle?”
The way we respond to stress, frustration and mistakes teaches our children what to do with their own emotions too.
We do not have to get it right all the time. Some of the most powerful moments come after we lose patience or feel overwhelmed, then choose to be honest and say sorry.
Never underestimate the power of messing up and apologising to your children. x
#mentalhealthmatters #emotionalwellbeing #childmentalhealth #outdoorlearning #naturetherapy #senchildren #traumainformed #wellbeingmatters #learningdifferently #connectionnotcorrections #EmotionallyHealthyMinds
Yesterday I was honoured to attend the SEND White Paper roundtable hosted by the @ifip_intnl_forums_inclusion @tutorsassoc and @pearsonbtec .
It was incredible to have so many professionals in the room including local authorities, headteachers, the DfE, business owners and MAT leads.
This is only the beginning of a long process.
One comment that really stayed with me was:
“An Approved Provision is a symptom of a broken system.”
And honestly, I believe this is so true. Emotionally Healthy Minds shouldn’t need to exist. And as much as I absolutely love what we do, I wish we didn’t have to. My dream is for schools to be environments where ALL children feel included, understood and have equal opportunities to learn, without needing external support to bridge the gap.
Will this ever happen? I am doubtful, but it is still my first choice and always will be.
One thing that was discussed is that the SEND White Paper is probably the best card the government currently has. It is a slow burner and meaningful change will take time to implement. With the uncertainty around politics at the moment, there are still many unanswered questions, but what encouraged me most was the shared commitment in the room to continue informing both this government and any future government about what genuinely needs to change for children and families.
The outcome of this meeting, made up of around 40 to 50 people from across the sector, will now be collated, drafted and officially presented to the Department for Education. I will also certainly be arranging a meeting with our local MP to continue these conversations locally.
There were so many important conversations in the room, but one thing I came away with was how incredible it felt hearing that so many people felt the same as me. Often we can feel very much on our own, plugging away in our own little section of the world.
But yesterday reminded me that Emotionally Healthy Minds is not on our own.
Without wanting to sound too much like a script from The Hunger Games, an army is rising!
#emotionallyhealthyminds #thetutorsassociation #send #sendreform #sendreformengland
I believe change is coming!
#emotionallyhealthyminds #thetutorsassociation #send #sendreform #sendreformengland
Our next farm session dates have just been released…
Our farm sessions are designed to be calm, nurturing and pressure free, especially for children who may struggle in busy environments, experience anxiety, low confidence, emotional overwhelm or school based difficulties.
Children have the opportunity to spend time with the animals, help with feeding and caring tasks, explore the outdoor environment, build relationships with trusted adults and peers, and simply enjoy being outside in a space where they can feel safe and accepted. There is no pressure to “perform” or get things right.
These sessions are always a favourite and such a special part of what we offer.
Please share with any home ed families you feel may be interested. To book your child on, or to find out more please email: admin@emotionallyhealthyminds.com
We can’t wait to welcome everyone back to the farm 🐑
#mentalhealthmatters #emotionalwellbeing #childmentalhealth #outdoorlearning #naturetherapy #senchildren #traumainformed #wellbeingmatters #learningdifferently #connectionnotcorrections #EmotionallyHealthyMinds #FarmLife
Today my daughter starts her first week of GCSEs.
If your child is starting GCSEs or SATs this week, please hold onto this:
I always think about that image so many of us have seen, a fish, a bird, a monkey and an elephant all being judged on their ability to climb the same tree. When one measure is applied to every child, some children will always leave believing they have failed, when actually the system simply failed to see them fully.
An exam cannot capture the fullness of a child.
It cannot measure courage.
It cannot measure kindness.
It cannot measure resilience.
It cannot measure the battles some young people have already fought just to walk into that exam hall.
So during exam season, here are a few ways we can support our children well:
• Give them space. Reduce chores at home where possible.
• Keep them fed, hydrated and rested. Stress sits in the body as much as the mind.
• Keep connection strong. Your calm presence matters more than perfect revision timetables.
• Regulate yourself first, even when you feel anxious for them. Our children borrow our nervous systems.
• Remind them often that you are already proud of them, and that their value does not rise or fall with results.
A child’s worth is never determined by a number printed on a piece of paper in the Summer. xx
#mentalhealthmatters #emotionalwellbeing #childmentalhealth #outdoorlearning #naturetherapy #senchildren #traumainformed #wellbeingmatters #learningdifferently #connectionnotcorrections #EmotionallyHealthyMinds
Yesterday we had the lovely Jenna start with us at Emotionally Healthy Minds, bringing our SWF team to 14. We are so excited to have her join us.
Jenna is a secondary Maths and English tutor with such a calm and supportive approach, and we already know she is going to make a huge difference to the young people she works with.
We know how difficult it can be to find the right support for teenagers, especially when confidence, anxiety or overwhelm are also part of the picture. Having tutors who genuinely connect with young people matters so much to us at EHM.
Jenna has limited availability, so if you would like to snag one of her slots, complete our online enquiry form and book a call with James, our SWF lead.
Her sessions won’t stay available for long.x
emotionallyhealthyminds.com
#mentalhealthmatters #emotionalwellbeing #childmentalhealth #outdoorlearning #naturetherapy #senchildren #traumainformed #wellbeingmatters #learningdifferently #connectionnotcorrections #EmotionallyHealthyMinds
Our brains are wired to protect us. But sometimes, they get it wrong.
They send out a “danger” signal when there isn’t actually any real threat.
So what can we do?
Pause. Look around.
Ask yourself, “What is the actual evidence that I’m not safe right now?”
Am I in danger… or does it just feel like I am?
This is where we gently challenge the brain.
Because just like when your car flashes up “Danger – Pre-collision alert” when nothing’s actually there… you don’t panic. You check. You look around. You realise you’re ok.
And then you carry on driving.
We can do the same with our thoughts.
We don’t ignore them, but we don’t automatically believe them either.
We notice them, check the evidence, and then gently tell our brain, “Thank you, but I’m safe right now.”
I know this isn’t always easy, but over time we are beginning to rewire the brain.
#emotionalwellbeing #anxietyhelp #emotionallyhealthyminds #parentingtools #selfregulation
First session back at the farm with Lauren and her students, and what a brilliant day it was.
The children spent time feeding and caring for the animals, alongside gentle and fun, nature-based activities in the woodland. Time with animals helps reduce anxiety and stress, builds confidence, and supports emotional regulation. When this is combined with being outdoors in nature, it becomes something really powerful.
For many of the children we support, environments like this help them feel calm, safe, and more able to just be themselves.
I’ll be honest, there are quite a few things at Emotionally Healthy Minds that happen without me that I wish I had more time to be part of. This is definitely one of them. The farmland is stunning, so peaceful, and every time I visit I come away feeling like I’ve had a bit of a reset.
We do have a few more spaces available. If you would like one for your child, email admin@emotionallyhealthyminds.com to book.
#mentalhealthmatters #emotionalwellbeing #childmentalhealth #outdoorlearning #naturetherapy #senchildren #traumainformed #wellbeingmatters #learningdifferently #connectionnotcorrections #EmotionallyHealthyMinds
