A CHARITY helping children with emotional and behavioural problems says the anxiety of returning to school could take its toll on pupils.

Swindon STEP in Nythe has been awarded two grants totalling more than £13,000 from the Wiltshire Community Foundation’s Coronavirus Response and Recovery Fund to help it open again after the lockdown. Some £5,000 of the grant was contributed by the Oakfield Development in Walcot, the new neighbourhood being sponsored by Nationwide.

STEP works with young people aged from seven to 18 who are struggling with mental health issues, ADHD and additional needs or who are from homes where there has been domestic violence or drug and alcohol dependency and have difficulties with behaviour or anger management. Over 10-week courses it works with them to teach them coping strategies and boost their confidence.

The group closed its doors because of the lockdown in March and had to support families via social media, phone or email over the summer. Now it has reopened but with limited capacity. The grants have helped it buy new equipment for social distancing and fund staffing to run extra sessions to maximise the number of children it can help

STEP director Johanna Bryant said: “We are working with as many children as we physically can, and we are having to adapt. When we do group work, we have to make sure young people aren’t sharing resources, they all have their own individual trays and workstations.

“We’ve had to really adapt our session plans, but we are doing it and the young people are very much engaged and seem happy to be back into a social situation again.”

But the Covid restrictions means it cannot take all the children referred to the group by schools.

“We’ve had to put children on hold on our waiting list, which is about 125 children at the moment,” said Mrs Bryant.

“Some of the Wiltshire Community Foundation funding we’ve had will allow us to run an additional group so we can see eight more children. It means we are running ten sessions a week, with 14 children every evening.”

Even the families who can’t get a place at STEP are being helped, said Mrs Bryant. “We are keeping in contact with our families, even those who are on the wating list,” she said.

“Following lockdown we created some guides for parents and carers to support them deal with issues, such as anxiety, anger management, ASD or ADHD, as extra help as well as keeping in regular contact with them so at least they have something while they are on the list.”

While the full impact of being kept at home and separated from friends has yet to be seen, Mrs Bryant said staff have been carrying out a survey among the 70 young people attending sessions.

“They are saying that they miss the school routine, they are worried about their GCSEs or apprenticeships and have also been worried about their family becoming ill,” she added.

“Several of the children we’ve spoken to have talked about money worries, they have overheard their parents talking and seen the news about job losses and are worried about what will happen.”

The charity says its long waiting list could become even longer if the pressures of returning to school take their toll.

“We will know in the next few weeks what impact going back to school and meeting friends has had on them. Schools are every different places to be,” she said.

“We will probably see an influx, if we are going to see one, over the next four to six weeks once schools have got themselves settled and perhaps they might identify people who need additional support.”

She said the Wiltshire Community Foundation grants have made a huge difference.

“One has been significant because we got new IT equipment to support the groups we are running,” she said.

“We had to get new desks for workstation for the children, plastic chairs because we had fabric ones, trays, pens and equipment. The grant is also going towards staffing for the extra group, so we are very grateful.”

Wiltshire Community Foundation interim co-chief executive Fiona Oliver said: “The amazing work STEP does with young people makes a huge difference in their lives and we are very pleased to have the support of the Oakfield Development to be able to help the group back up and running again.

"It will be some time before we know the real impact of the lockdown on young people who were already struggling so it is essential that we have groups like STEP and so important that our fund is there to support them.”

The Wiltshire Community Foundation fund has already raised more than £1.1 million and distributed £850,000 to more than 200 voluntary groups across the county to help them tackle the fallout from the pandemic.

To find out more go to wiltshirecf.org.uk