Pupils at all of our primary schools are part of a new Trust-wide initiative to educate children about mental health and provide them with opportunities to take positions of responsibility to support younger students in mental health matters.
Our Year 5 ‘LIFE Ambassadors’ have recently undertaken mental health first aid training to learn; what affects our mental health, how to spot signs of being unwell and what can help.
The course is written and designed by Claire and Rachael at Dragonfly: Impact Education, who support schools to promote good mental health and nurture healthy young minds, and delivered by Ceri Daniels, Executive Head of Fordham & Holy Trinity Primary Schools and a trained Senior Lead for Mental health in Schools.
The children attended 6 hours of training over 3 sessions and have completed the course in time to lead activities for National Children’s Mental Health Week in each of their schools from Monday 5th February.
To launch the week, all children and adults were be asked to wear yellow on the first day, to help raise awareness of the importance of mental health in everyone. Following this, a range of activities took place across the Trust including a visit from Dogs4Therapy and ‘positive noticing day’ where pupils will go home wearing luggage labels with positive comments people have made about them during the day.
To tie in with the activities, our flagship secondary school, The Frances Bardsley Academy, also took part in some Mental Health Awareness workshops last week too including students from years 7-11 attending mental health sessions run by the charity, Mind of the Student, to help pupils to understand their own mental health and how to cope with challenges in life and flourish.
The Pupil First Aiders ongoing role in school will now see them become the ‘go-to person’ for anyone who is going through some form of mental health issue. They will be able to guide the student in distress to get the help that they need and also look out for or spot anyone in distress. Their role is not to fix the problem, but to support peers with self-help strategies or signposting them. They will also inform trusted adults in the school of any concerns.
Ceri said “We are so proud of our year 5 Ambassadors and the work they have put in to complete the course and become Mental Health First Aiders. It is a role which I feel is becoming ever more vital in schools and we hope it will benefit both the pupils who have taken on the responsibility and the children they will be supporting. In the summer term we will be writing a mental health charter for all LIFE schools to sign up to as we continue to focus our efforts on the Trust’s purpose to create great learning communities where children flourish”.
