Whole School Approach to Good Mental Health

It is well-recognised that schools and academies are experiencing a need for support around promoting children and young people's mental health. We have responded to the need in Leicestershire by developing a free, short training course to look at behaviours, risk and resilience factors, school-based interventions and resources. An important aspect of our training is thinking about ways to promote staff wellbeing too.

Our workshop includes and introduction to:

• Mental health and mental ill-health
• Behaviours and risk and resilience factors
• Ideas for school-based support/intervention

For information about our dates and venues for this training go to our training page

There are lots of resources available to support schools work around mental health; listed below are some sources of support.

Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) is a training course which teaches people how to identify, understand and help someone who may be experiencing a mental health issue. MHFA won't teach you to be a therapist, but it will teach you to listen, reassure and respond, even in a crisis – and even potentially stop a crisis from happening.

You'll learn to recognise warning signs of mental ill health, and develop the skills and confidence to approach and support someone while keeping yourself safe. You'll also learn how to empower someone to access the support they might need for recovery or successful management of symptoms.

What's more, you'll gain an understanding of how to support positive wellbeing and tackle stigma in the world around you. See our training page for details

Mentally Healthy Schools brings together quality-assured information, advice and resources to help primary schools understand and promote children's mental health and wellbeing, with an aim to increase staff awareness, knowledge and confidence to help you support your pupils. Mentally Healthy Schools is a legacy project of the Heads Together mental health campaign.

Academic Resilience - beating the odds for better results, is an approach for schools devised by Lisa Williams and Professor Angie Hart and adopted by YoungMinds. Based on Professor Hart's collaborative resilience work at the University of Brighton and Boingboing, YoungMinds continues to work in partnership with them to develop the approach and support for schools. Free, practical resources to help everyone in the school community step up and support pupils; academic resilience

The Royal College of Psychiatrists have a terrific range of leaflets about emotional health and wellbeing and mental health for teachers,young people and parent/carers.

Schools in Mind is a free network for school staff and allied professionals which shares academic and clinical expertise regarding the wellbeing and mental health issues that affect schools. The network provides a trusted source of up-to-date and accessible information and resources that school leaders, teachers and support staff can use to support the mental health and wellbeing of the children and young people in their care.

MindEd This portal contains a wealth of information for anybody working with children and young people's mental health issues. You can use MindEd in many ways, but basically it is there to help you become informed and better equipped when dealing with children and young people. It is aimed at anyone and everyone working regularly with children or young people, 0-18 years of age. There are a range of materials extending from the general level to more specialised levels.

Time to Change is a campaign to end the stigma and discrimination that people with mental health problems face in England run by the charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness that aims to change behaviour, rather than just attitudes. The Time to Change schools pack includes everything you need to help start conversations about mental health at school. As well as everything you need for having your conversation in the staff room, there's an assembly, a lesson and a very quick session to run in form time, giving you ideas on how to start talking about mental health. Talking about mental health doesn't need to be difficult, order your Time to Talk Day pack for everything you need to take part on the day. http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/timetotalkday-school

The Samaritans have developed a fantastic resource to help teach Secondary age students about a wealth of emotional health and wellbeing issues. These 1 hour and 20 minute sessions enable students to consider the range of factors that can affect our emotional health and how to recognise signs of poor emotional health in ourselves and others.

FRESH is a really useful website by Alder Hey NHS Trust which explains what CAMHS is all about and the help you might expect. It also contains lots of other resources and lesson plans helping to make students more aware of their mental health, emotional wellbeing and how to build their resilience

Mind Your Way is a new place to get help with your mental health and wellbeing. It has been developed by the Cornwall CAMHS Young People's board, with the aim of providing a safe, reliable source of information and advice. Mind Your Way is designed by young people, for young people, however content and links will also be useful to parents, carers and professionals.

Based in the South East of England, since 2006 they have trained over 5,000 people in suicide prevention and mental health both locally and nationally. Stay Alive App - A suicide prevention pocket resource for the UK offers help and support both to people with thoughts of suicide and to people concerned about someone else. This suicide prevention app won a Patient Safety Award for Technology and IT to Improve Patient Safety and can be personalised to tailor it to the user.

Factors affecting children's mental health over time. Children Society Report