Polaris Children's Services provide a service called Caring to Care, which is an emotional health & wellbeing service for children and young people in care. When young people are growing up, there is sometimes lots of changes at home, at school, with friends and with family that can be difficult to deal with. We understand that it can be useful to talk to people you know about how you feel, but sometimes it may feel easier to talk to somebody else. Your Caring to Care worker will listen to what you have to say without judging you and will try to help you understand your feelings and help you develop confidence in expressing yourself.

The Caring to Care team is made up of lots of different people with different experiences, skills and opinions and we use lots of different ways to help you think about and understand what is bothering you. Your Caring to Care worker may start with some sessions to get to know you by playing games, talking, or making stories together. The sessions will be held where you feel most comfortable and the worker will work with you around issues you feel are important. Your worker will then try to understand these feelings with you and help you and the important people around you to try and understand them too.

We meet young people with lots of different concerns, including: • Problems with where they live • Problems with their friends • Feeling sad a lot of the time • Being confused about their feelings Young people may even be having problems with their eating, using drugs or drinking alcohol. It is a long list and nothing is too big or too small to talk about.