The Cove is an 14 bedded specialist inpatient unit for young people between the ages of 13 and 18 who are experiencing a variety of mental health problems.

The young people who access The Cove have often experienced:

• trauma 
• losses
• complex adversities in their lives.

They are often struggling with difficulties including:

• in relationships with friends and family (past and present)
• about their identities, their feelings about themselves and their hopes for the future
• coping with their experiences safely, in ways that leave those around them worried, they might come to harm (for example; self-harm, eating disorders and hearing voices).

What We Do

The team at The Cove start by looking for the good reasons why young people are so distressed – why they are thinking, doing and feeling the way they are. The team expects this to be a really complicated set of good reasons, whether it is because of experiences of trauma and adversity, whether there be psychological, biological, social or emotional reasons. Our job is to ask what has happened and try and make sense of what is going on for them. We work with every young person and develop an understanding of how these reasons all fit together. 

Then we can: 

• Support the young people to bear what they are feeling, to cope with how they are thinking and to make choices about what they do, all based on this better understanding;
• Provide them with resources and strategies to build their resilience, confidence and capabilities in the face of their difficulties and distress;
• Plan with the young people, their families and community services so that they can safely return to the community, better placed to live their lives;
• Everything that The Cove does is in consultation and collaboration with the young people themselves, their families and community based services, based on the understanding we have developed of their needs.

Visit our meet the team page to find out more about our staff and what they do.

Referrals

To discuss a referral please contact the team.