Who are Kooth?

Kooth is an online counselling and advice service offering a 24 hour source of help for Wirral's 11 to 25 year olds, with backup from many different agencies and services.

Kooth allows young people to get in touch for help through web chat, email, and booked one to one chat sessions.

Kooth have counsellors who have been specially trained over many years and follow BACP (British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy) guidelines and code of ethics.

They also have other workers with special knowledge about certain things, like drugs, alcohol or sexual health - they are not counsellors but they can help by giving young people information about things they may feel uncomfortable talking to other people about.

What are Kooth's aims?

• To encourage young people to open up to people about their problems and difficulties
• Help them 'nip their problems in the bud' before they become serious
• Reach out to young people who may be struggling alone
• Encourage young people to discuss problems at home, school, work or with their peers
• Encourage young people to 'tell' a computer problems they may not wish to discuss face to face
• Provide peace of mind that whatever time of day - they can access a service and receive a response within 24 hours.

How can a young person use Kooth?

They can access the service through the website at www.kooth.com and refer themselves via the referral box.

Kooth will contact them and allocate them a counselor, who they will then access through the site.

A young person can book an appointment or request a live chat session, by sending the counsellor a message.

The site is also for information. Young people can write an article for the magazine, use the message board, or chat in the discussion rooms with other young people.