Starting secondary school: a guide for parents

by The Spark Counselling | Mar 11, 2022 | Children and Young People, education, families, mental health, parenting, relationships, Society, the spark, Tips, topical, young people

Starting secondary school can be daunting for children and their parents. To help smooth the transition, our team of Children and Young People Counsellors have put together their top tips on helping your child prepare for starting secondary school. Ask: how are you...

How to cope with the winter blues – part 3

by The Spark Counselling | Jan 18, 2022 | mental health, relationships, the spark, Tips, topical

In the final part of The Spark’s ‘How to cope with the winter blues’ series, we’re offering a few more tips on keeping your mood up when the sun is going down. You can catch up with part 1 and part 2 where we looked at how a ‘sexy...

How to cope with the winter blues – part 1

by The Spark Counselling | Jan 18, 2022 | counselling resources, couples, mental health, relationships, Society, the spark, Tips, topical

When the days start getting shorter and the nights longer, many people start to feel their mood drop. Unlike Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) – a form of clinical depression – the ‘winter blues’ is a general term for the feelings of sadness and lethargy we can all...

The challenge of learning to trust others

by Janet Balcombe | Jan 27, 2022 | mental health, relationships, Society, the spark, Tips

The Oxford Dictionary defines trust as “a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something”. Right now, you probably have a list of names that come to mind of people you trust and, perhaps, people you don’t. But what enables us to...

How to cope with the winter blues – part 2

by The Spark Counselling | Jan 18, 2022 | couples, couples and individuals, mental health, relationships, the spark, Tips, topical

Welcome to part 2 of The Spark’s ‘How to cope with the winter blues’ series offering our tips on ways to defeat the winter blues. Catch up on part 1 of ‘How to cope with the winter blues’ where we looked at how embracing the winter...

Get some rest – stress-free Christmas tip 19

by The Spark Counselling | Dec 9, 2021 | Christmas, couples, couples and individuals, families, mental health, relationships, Society, Stress free Christmas, the spark, Tips, topical

Tip 19 on our countdown to a stress-free Christmas is really simple: get some rest! You can catch up on all 19 tips for your stress free Christmas on our website. Get some rest Christmas offers up a perfect storm of late nights and early starts. Which means getting a...