A mum in Thanet is bringing people to focus on child mental health by laying out a pumpkin trail for this year’s Halloween.
As trick or treating becomes a risky activity under Covid, many parents have come up with alternative ways for their children to have fun.
However, the Thanet Pumpkin Trail Facebook group, which now has over 4,000 members, aims more than that.
Ange Martin, the organiser of the trail and the founder of the Facebook group, said she hoped the children could have something fun and exciting to look forward to after having a number of things taken from them this year.
“Children’s mental health is something I’m extremely passionate about, even more so in the last few years because I have watched my own daughter’s mental health decline…It is heartbreaking to see,” Mrs Martin wrote in a post.
The girl lost her biological father in January 2019, when he was 35 and she was eight. In addition to living through the pain of losing a parent, she also was bullied in school.
Seeing her daughter suffer from anxiety and depression, Mrs Martin has tried her best to help improve the situation.
“My partner and I have been helping her as much as we can. Allowing her to speak freely any time of the day – even [if] it’s at midnight and she’s woken up because she is sad. She knows she can come to wake us to chat and we will listen with no issues at all,” said Mrs Martin.
Now as both a hairdresser and a child’s mental health advocate, Mrs Martin hopes to help the children of Thanet and maybe further a field in the future.
