Healthy Minds

To nurture the skills of resilience is key to providing young people with the ability to cope with stress, adversity, failure and challenges. Resilience is evident when young people have a greater ability to “bounce back” when faced with difficulties and achieve positive outcomes.

Resilience empowers an individual to recognise that everyone has physical and mental health and that mental health can move between healthy and poor, dependent on an individual’s circumstances. It empowers a person to recognise poor mental health in themselves and others and be aware of support that is available.

It is widely recognised that a child’s emotional health and wellbeing influences their cognitive development and learning, as well as their physical and social health and their mental wellbeing in adulthood.

In an average class of 30 15-year-old pupils:

• three could have a mental disorder
• ten are likely to have witnessed their parents separate
• one could have experienced the death of a parent
• seven are likely to have been bullied
• six may be self-harming

The Department for Education (DfE) recognises that: “in order to help their pupils succeed; schools have a role to play in supporting them to be resilient and mentally healthy”. Moreover schools have a duty to promote the wellbeing of students. DfE also identifies a whole-school approach to promoting good mental health as a protective factor for child and adolescent mental health. Although schools and colleges play a significant and valuable role in helping to promote student emotional health and wellbeing, their contribution should be considered as one element of a wider multi-agency approach.

The Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Taskforce recommends that schools assign a lead on mental health issues who would be responsible for linking schools with expertise, identifying issues and making referrals.

Source – DfE

Local Support

YMCA

YMCA Trinity Group, a locally-based charity, offers support across Cambridgeshire, Peterborough, Suffolk and into Northamptonshire. They provide a wide range of services for children, young people and adults through a number of projects. The Menu of Services was designed to offer education settings and youth organisations a range of programmes to improve the physical, emotional and

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