An East Lothian mental health charity for chronically ill children in hospital has doubled the number they have helped over the past year.
The Teapot Trust in East Lothian was started over ten years ago when founders Laura and John Young were spending a lot of time with in hospital with their daughter suffering with autoimmune disease Lupus.
She sadly died in 2008 and the charity was set up a couple of years later to offer mental health support to chronically ill children in hospital and their families.
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The essential service uses art therapists to help kids between four and 12 years old - with art identified as an effective way of gauging if young patients are coping.
The charity received £5,000 from Foundation Scotland in January this year for a new social prescribing project providing one-to-one art therapy sessions for children and young people.
This will allow the East Lothian charity to work with GP Practices across Scotland to promote their one-to-one art psychotherapy self-referrals scheme to their patient families.
The service works at hospitals across the UK, employing 16 art therapists across the country - all started in East Lothian.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Sarah Randell, Chief Executive of the charity said: “We are most grateful for the support of Foundation Scotland.
"The funding we have received from the PHP Community Impact Fund is extending the reach of our one-to-one art psychotherapy service for children and young people struggling to cope with a chronic physical condition.
"The Teapot Trust self-referrals scheme enables families to get the support they need when they need it most."
She continued: "This funding is supporting referrals from either a PHP owned GP Practice or directly from one of their patient families for the first time.
"Teapot Trust is delighted to help children and families build resilience, develop healthy coping mechanisms and improve mental health and wellbeing through this work across Scotland.”
James who was helped by the service, told of the benefits in helping him connect with others.
He said: “Because of my autism I find it hard to talk to people but with art therapy it was better because there was a different way to communicate.
"It was really good that it was by zoom call as that worked really well for me. I thought Jane (Art Therapist) was very good at helping me.”
His mum said: "James was struggling a lot with his mental health and with understanding and processing feelings of grief after losing a close friend.
"At its worst, it had a huge impact on our lives as he reached a very low point on a couple of occasions where he told us that he had thought about taking his own life. It was a very worrying time for us.
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"By the end of the sessions, there was a huge improvement in his mental health and it helped him completely turn around
the way he was feeling to enable him to cope so much better.
"He now seems to have a very positive outlook on life. I would go as far as saying that it has transformed his life and his
future and helped equip him well with coping strategies for the future too.”
