![\"Melisha](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/8cecbfc25ced755b378fe091e48275a2.jpeg\"\/)
<\/p>\nA charity that supports children with mental health disorders said demand for its services has tripled since the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n
KidsAid, which is based in Northampton and works across the Midlands and south east of England, provides long-term, trauma-specialised therapeutic support to children.<\/p>\n
In 2024-25 the charity worked with 495 children in comparison to 2021-21 when it supported 163 children.<\/p>\n
Carla Managan, the clinical lead at the charity, said: “A lot of children never returned to school [after the pandemic], and selective mutism has risen too.<\/p>\n
“It surrounds anxiety about going back to school \u2013 many of these children struggled in school before the pandemic, then their anxiety increased during the time schools closed.”<\/p>\n
The charity said it planned to deliver 4,500 therapy sessions to more than 500 children and families this year.<\/p>\n
Mrs Managan said the charity’s staff has more than tripled in size since the pandemic.<\/p>\n
“During Covid, we had eight therapists and two staff members. Now there are 25 therapists and 10 staff members. We are expanding all the time,” she said.<\/p>\n
The charity said in 2024 more than 60% of referrals it received were due to children being exposed to abuse, either experiencing it directly or witnessing others being abused.<\/p>\n
It costs KidsAid about \u00a32,200 to provide 26 weeks of one-to-one therapy for a child.<\/p>\n
The charity said it received no statutory or public health funding, instead its services were financed through a combination of community and corporate fundraising, grants from trusts and foundations and some families contributing to sessions.<\/p>\n
KidsAid said it currently received an average of 50 unfunded referrals each month, children in crisis who need help, but whom the charity lacks the money to support.<\/p>\n
It said it seeks contributions from schools or applies for grants to support these referrals, but due to an increase in demand it cannot always support every unfunded referral.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Melisha Pillay said the support her foster child got from KidsAid was amazing and made a real difference. [Ollie Conopo\/BBC]<\/p>\n
Melisha Pillay has been a foster carer for three years and she sought support from KidsAid for one of the children in her care.<\/p>\n
The child was given art therapy in her school for a year to help her understand and learn about emotions.<\/p>\n
Ms Pillay said: “The art therapy allowed her to just feel more comfortable and be able to access emotions sometimes through colour, pictures, movement.”<\/p>\n
The success of the therapy has led to the child being reunited with her dad, Ms Pillay said.<\/p>\n
She added that the child was now able to “express the emotion of sadness when she felt sad, but then also able to understand that we can hold two emotions”.<\/p>\n
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