Galina Markova, Our UK Therapeutic Manager for the charity, has taken over this month’s CEO’s Blog and explains why.

Children’s Mental Health Week – February 2026

As we mark Children’s Mental Health Week, we are invited to reflect on this year’s theme: “This Is My Place.” It’s a theme that speaks to the core of what every child needs—to feel they belong. To feel safe, valued, understood, and part of a community that welcomes them just as they are. In the Wraparound service at St Christopher’s, this isn’t something we focus on once a year. For us, helping children and young people feel that sense of belonging is at the heart of everything we do, every single week.

For many children in care, experiences of trauma, instability, or disrupted relationships can make the idea of “belonging” feel unfamiliar or fragile. That is why our commitment to therapeutic, emotionally attuned care is so vital. Our therapists from the Wraparound team work alongside residential care teams to ensure that every environment we create offers more than shelter—it offers a sense of place, identity, and connection.

What Does It Mean to Create a Place of Belonging?

A true sense of belonging comes from relationships, consistency, and emotional safety. It is a place where children and young people know:

• This is somewhere I am understood.
• This is somewhere I am accepted.
• This is somewhere I matter.

Through daily interactions, attuned responses, and trauma-informed care, we help young people feel that they have a place where they can grow, express themselves, and be genuinely seen.

Our Safehomes framework is central to this. Safehomes emphasises the everyday life of the home as a community where healing happens naturally. It ensures that moments such as mealtimes, routines, and conversations become opportunities to strengthen belonging by reinforcing predictability, warmth, and connection.

Supporting Our Teams so Young People Can Feel at Home

A child’s sense of belonging is shaped not only by their environment, but by the people around them. Our Wraparound team supports frontline staff so they can build the kind of relationships that help children feel grounded and cared for.

We do this through:

• Regular training focused on trauma-informed practice, attachment, and understanding behaviour through a therapeutic lens.
• Reflective practice that helps staff deepen empathy and insight.
• Emotional support for staff, recognising that caring for young people requires space for staff to process their own experiences, too.

When staff feel held, supported, and resilient, they are more able to create the consistent, attuned relationships that help young people feel they truly belong.

Belonging Is Built in Everyday Moments

Perhaps the most powerful part of creating a sense of place is the small, ordinary interactions that communicate, “You matter here.”

A shared joke.
A comforting word after a bad day.
A conversation while cooking.
A staff member remembering a young person’s favourite drink or hobby.

These simple moments form the threads of connection—threads that, over time, weave into belonging.

At St Christopher’s, and particularly in the Wraparound team, we are committed to helping every child and young person feel safe, held, and genuinely part of something. While Children’s Mental Health Week offers a welcome spotlight, our work continues far beyond this week.

We will keep partnering with our care teams to create homes filled with warmth, predictability, and opportunities for healing—places where children can grow, thrive, and proudly say:

“This is my place.”