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Action for Happiness brings people together and provides practical resources. They help others learn evidence-based skills for happier living, feel a sense of belonging and commit to personal action to create more happiness, for ourselves and others. The Action for Happiness monthly calendar is a well known resource, providing wellbeing activities to carry out each day. These are suitable for all ages.
Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families This 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. All materials are based on rigorous evidence and have been thoroughly evaluated in schools.
Beacon House Therapeutic Services and Trauma Team Beacon House is an integrated mental health and occupational therapy service offering a range of assessments and therapies for children, families and adults. They offer free resources on developmental trauma, trauma and attachment in the classroom, children and family mental health and some useful animations.
Boing Boing is a Community Interest Company (CIC) who works alongside children, young people, families and adults exposed to social disadvantage. They use resilience research and practice to help people having particularly tough times and have achieved success in Blackpool and Brighton. We recommend using their free academic resources and resilience framework.
Centre of the Developing Child – Harvard University The mission of the Center on the Developing Child is to drive science-based innovation that achieves breakthrough outcomes for children facing adversity. They have an extensive free resource library.
This is a national charity working to promote the positive mental health of children and young people. It provides free resources and online training for adults working with children and young people. We recommend tuning into their free school based webinar series.
Child Outcomes Research Consortium (CORC) CORC provides support to individuals and organisations across the mental health and education sectors, helping them to collect and improve the quality of their data relating to children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing outcomes and use evidence in their pursuit of more effective child-centred support, services and systems. They offer a range of free measurement tools and toolkits to help you collect information on pupil and school wellbeing outcomes.
Designated/Senior Mental Health Leads Every school has access to funding from the Department for Education to access training for a Mental Health Lead in their school. Information can be found here. There are many resources to access to support a whole school approach to mental health and wellbeing which you can find through the mentally healthy schools website.
The Letter of Hope was created by people in Devon with personal experience of suicide and is intended to provide hope and encouragement to people who are facing difficult times. With the help of Recovery Devon, DPT have created two new versions of the letter: Letter for Tomorrow for young people written by young people, and Hope Letter, an Easy Read version for people with learning disabilities. There are also audio versions - please visit the website for other versions.
Heads together. Mentally healthy schools Mentally Healthy Schools is a new website to help primary school staff support the mental health of your pupils. There is a range of expert and practical information and resources to help all primary school staff understand, promote and deal confidently with children’s mental health issues: jargon-free information on what can undermine and what can help emotional wellbeing; tips and strategies to help; and specific advice on vulnerable groups.
Health behaviour in school age children (HBSC): data analysis Thematic analysis of the recent HBSC survey data to explore the rising trend in poorer emotional wellbeing of young people. Themes includes self-harm in adolescence, wellbeing of adolescent girls and cyberbullying.
Kooth.com is a free, safe, confidential and non-stigmatised way for young people to receive counselling, advice and support online. The service is accessible for all 11-18 year olds in the area, and accepts self-referrals by young people. Kooth delivers 1000’s of counselling sessions each year across the UK Counsellors are available until 10pm each night, 365 days per year, providing a much needed out of hours service for advice and help. As a large percentage of referrals to CAMHS are deemed inappropriate to their criteria, Kooth provides an alternative way of ensuring young people can access free support when they need it, in a medium young people know and use.
The Mental Health Support Team in Schools (MHST) is a new NHS service commissioned to work with a number of schools across Devon and Torbay. They offer early intervention to help children and young people with their mental health and emotional wellbeing. MHSTs have created a new safety/wellbeing plans with young people and families which is child-centred.
MindEd is a free educational e-learning resource on children and young people's mental health for all adults working in education, health, education, criminal justice and community settings. It is aimed at anyone from beginner through to specialist. To select an e-learning session visit MindEd for Professional or Volunteers area – no log in is required to access this content.
PHE - Public Health England School Zone Here you will find the most up to date resources for campaign weeks and general resources about concerning behaviours on the rise. Their Mental Wellbeing content can support your teaching of mental wellbeing topics to both primary and secondary students, with flexible, ready-to-use content co-created with teachers and young people. You can also find simple, practical advice for a healthier mind for yourself too.
Good PSHE education begins with a well-planned programme. The PSHE curriculum guidance section brings together the advice you need to develop your PSHE curriculum, and their invaluable resource library offers high-quality resources to help you put your plans into practice - from planning frameworks to detailed lesson plans. The resources are either developed by the Association or quality assured by us against best practice criteria. For free resources – look out for resource with ticks icons but without padlock icons. How to have a difficult conversation with children tips
Reading Well Books on Prescription helps you to understand and manage their health and wellbeing using self-help reading. The scheme is endorsed by health professionals and supported by public libraries. They have a Reading Well booklist for Young People. These are books recommended by health professionals and young people about mental health, designed to provide advice and information to 13-18 years olds about issues like anxiety, stress and OCD, and difficult experiences like bullying and exams. Books are available to borrow for free from public libraries.
The Rise Above website and social media channels host exclusive content from vloggers and YouTubers, including films, interactive videos, animations and quizzes. The content tackles topics that young people are most concerned about, such as puberty, relationships, smoking, drinking, alcohol, peer pressure, exam stress and body image.
Rise Above for Schools from PHE provides new PSHE resources to support secondary school teachers when promoting positive health, wellbeing and resilience among young people aged 11 to 16. By using video content featuring influential young people, such as vloggers and YouTubers, the resources will help specialist and non-specialist teachers to facilitate open and informed conversations about sensitive topics among their students.
The Deal (Developing Emotional Awareness and Listening) programme is a free resource for teachers and other educational professionals designed to help develop resilience in young people around 14 years and over. Lesson plans, activities, hand-outs, DEAL digital resources, teachers’ notes and staff training materials can all be accessed and downloaded at any time from Samaritans website.
Solihull Approach - In our Place In our Place (Solihull Approach) offer FREE online courses dedicated to improving emotional health and well-being in parents, children, teenagers, adults and grandparents. Torbay residents and professionals can access these courses using the code TAMAR.
STOP Stigma (produced by the Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust) is an excellent resource which will enable teachers to explore and challenge the stigma that may be attached to people experiencing the most common mental health problems. Targeting Year 9 but flexible enough to be used with younger or older pupils, it is relevant and realistic in terms of its aims, clear learning objectives, demands on teachers’ own experience and curriculum time. The material encourages an interactive approach including group work and enabling pupils to undertake their own investigations. Lessons 'start from where the pupils are’ offering opportunities for critical self-reflection to aid assessment as pupils' individual learning progresses. Young Minds is the UK’s leading charity championing the wellbeing and mental health of young people. We recommend using their free academic resources. |