MEDSTEAD osteopath Sheree McGregor is also a Sunflower practitioner, helping children to cope with and overcome mental and behavioural problems as well as helping worried parents unable to cope with a troubled child.

The commercial image of a happy, carefree childhood, is often far from the truth and children suffer the same problems as adults, but often, are unable to talk about it or seek help.

One startling example is when a practitioner was asked for help by a desperate mother after she found a suicide note from her eight-year-old son.

On Monday, Sheree gave a talk on Radio Surrey about the Sunflower Trust, which is a registered charity, and how she and the other practitioners are also masters of applied kinesiology and qualified neuro-linguistic programmers.

Often the problem with a child can be structural, muscular or bad posture and this is why, while working with a child, practitioners look at all aspects of the whole child – musculoskeletal, neurological, biochemical and emotional – and provide children with coping skills for life.

The Sunflower Trust was set up more than 20 years ago by Canon Telfer at Guildford Cathedral, a Guildford osteopath and a Farnham-based educational psychologist to help children be the best that they can be.

The charity has helped hundreds of children – many with diagnosed health, behavioural or learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, autism, asperger’s – other children with low self-esteem, bad behaviour, poor concentration – and when a parent feels their child needs help but they can’t quite put their finger on the problem.

It was awarded Charity Innovator of the Year in 2015 for delivering a health and wellbeing programme and hundreds of children have gone through it. The charity provides bursaries for families that need financial help.

One of the reasons the Sunflower Trust is so valued for the service it provides is because CAMHS (Children and Adolescent Mental Health Service) is overstretched and unable to meet demand, being labelled “unfit for purpose” in a recent BBC Panorama documentary.

The programme highlighted how one in 10 children are struggling to cope and yet only a quarter of children with mental health problems are getting the treatment they need.

Following the programme, the Sunflower Trust was asked by both BBC Radio Surrey and Radio Woking to talk about how they have helped those families who are still on the waiting list or have been turned away.

Following her broadcast on Monday – she also gave a talk on Radio Woking the week before, Sheree told the Herald: “It is a real growing concern.

“It is often many months or even a year on the waiting list to be assessed and then the children have to go through quite a long assessment procedure in order to get the help.

“So, you can just imagine the impact on the families and the children and how do they cope in the meantime. The key is support. A parent is going to feel really helpless when they have a child who is displaying behaviour they do not know how to deal with.

“This is very distressing for all concerned and a parent needs to feel as they are doing the right thing to help their child and within a time frame that is beneficial.

“Sunflower offers immediate help and support without a waiting list or the need for a diagnosis.

“Sunflower goes right back to basics to look at every aspect of a child’s body before they work on a child’s mental health.

“It assesses a child’s whole wellbeing before designing a programme of therapy that works for their individual needs.

“The charity sees children who have a wide range of challenges – from anxiety to anger, those on the autistic spectrum, those who have learning difficulties or behavioural challenges and lot more in between.”

Three parents, who contacted the Sunflower Trust, have told of their frustrating experiences with CAMHS on BBC Radio Surrey, including the mother who after her eight-year-old son had been excluded from school for his anger, wrote a suicide note six months later and is still waiting for his therapy a year later.

The mother said: “A year is a long time in a child’s life. I don’t know where we would be if it hadn’t been for Sunflower.

“Sunflower’s initial assessment was like having an MOT for your child and it revealed that my son had postural imbalances and was completely out of alignment.

“This has now been corrected so he is a lot more comfortable in his own skin, he doesn’t fidget as much resulting in a much calmer boy at school.

“He has been given help to assist his right left brain integration to boost his focus and concentration.”

A happier and more well adjusted little boy and Sunflower practitioners, like Sheree, are bringing the same help across the South East to hundreds of boys and girls so they can have a happy childhood again.