Support for children and teens

We work with children and teenagers, with parents who want to understand their child better, and with schools that want their staff and students to know how POCSO works. What follows explains each of those, and what happens when you get in touch.

Counselling for children and teenagers

Sessions are one to one, at the child's pace. We might talk, or draw, or play, depending on how old they are and how easily words come to them. Nikita Vashistha does this work — she is a Counselling Psychologist and a Certified POCSO Consultant.

Common reasons families come to us: school stress and exam pressure, anger that seems to arrive from nowhere, friendships that have gone wrong, a child who has stopped talking at home, sleep that has fallen apart, a family change like a move or a bereavement, or a teenager who is clearly carrying something and will not say what.

We do not diagnose. We do not label a child. We work alongside a paediatrician or psychiatrist where one is already involved, and we will say plainly when a child needs a kind of help we are not the right people to give.

Parental coaching

Sometimes the most useful hour is the one with the parents, not the child. Parental coaching is a working session about your specific household: what is happening, what you have already tried, and what to try next.

• Making sense of behaviour that has stopped making sense to you.
• Boundaries, screens, homework and the arguments that grow around them.
• Talking to a teenager who has gone quiet, without making it worse.
• Two parents who are handling the same child in two different ways, and the friction that creates.
• Body-safety conversations — how to teach a young child about their own body in language that fits their age.

How a parent gets in touch

A parent or legal guardian has to be the one who starts this. That is what Indian law asks of us, and it is also how we make sure the adults around a child know a professional is now involved.

1. You write or call. Use the form on our booking page, or WhatsApp us. You do not need to explain everything up front.
2. We reply and ask a few plain questions. Your name, your relationship to the child, the child's age, and roughly what has been going on.
3. The first session is usually with you, the parents.We use it to understand the situation and to agree what the child will be told about why they are coming.
4. We explain the limits of what we can keep to ourselves— to you, and in age-appropriate words to the child — before any session with the child begins. Nobody is surprised by the notice at the top of this page later.
5. You can stop at any point. You do not owe us a reason.

POCSO awareness and prevention workshops for schools

We run sessions in schools on POCSO awareness and prevention. These are structured, age-appropriate and delivered to a whole group — they are awareness and prevention work, not a channel for individual disclosures. Where a disclosure does happen, the reporting duty in the notice at the top of this page applies, and we help the school follow the correct procedure.

• For students. Body safety, the difference between safe and unsafe touch, and who to tell — pitched to the age group in the room.
• For teachers and staff. What POCSO requires of them, how to receive a disclosure without making things harder for the child, and what has to happen next.
• For parents. What the law covers, what a school's obligations are, and how to talk to your own child about it.
• For families already in the process. Support while a case moves through the system, including what to expect and how to steady a household around it.

Workshops are arranged directly with the school. [FILL: workshop duration, group size and fee structure]