Supporting children and young people in their mental health
A guide for East Sussex schools: a resilience-based, whole school approach to promoting positive mental health and addressing individual needs
Introduction
The purpose of this guide is to encourage and build on what good schools already do in terms of differentiation and adapting approaches to include all children and help to maximise their academic and emotional development. Good schools address barriers to academic outcomes, and this guide is designed to support schools in addressing emotional behavioural and emerging mental health problems which can be barriers to attainment. Taking a whole school approach to emotional and mental wellbeing and using some of the simple low cost suggestions for classroom teachers in this guide can support children and young people’s sense of belonging to a school and encourage attendance, good development and improve learning outcomes.
Section 1: Outlines the role of the school in supporting children and young people, what national guidance and Ofsted expect from schools in this area, and has been produced in line with local ESCC guidance for schools.
Section 2: Introduces the concept of resilience as a way of approaching positive mental health and the evidence based Resilience Framework. It also focuses in on what schools can do to promote resilience using a whole school approach, what ‘good’ looks like, and how this can be achieved.
Section 3: provides practical information on how teachers and school staff can support individual children and young people experiencing the most common mental health issues:
- Anxiety difficulties
- Depression
- Eating difficulties
- Self-harm
- Attention difficulties
- Conduct Disorder
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
- Attachment difficulties
For each mental health issue there are some tips for simple and effective interactions with children and young people as well as some ideas for including parents. These tips are designed to be easy to use and can be printed out and pinned to classroom and staff room walls.
Section 3 also includes recommended further reading at the end of each part. The further reading has been chosen from websites and books that Boingboing have used to support our work and that have been highly recommended by parents and professionals.
Section 4: Focuses on the value of including children and young people in helping to create positive prevention activities, identifying gaps and creating solutions, and some suggests practical ways in which this can be achieved.
Section 5: Contains appendices that provide more detailed reading as well as a sample lesson plan.
The entire guidance document is available to download from the link at the bottom of this page.
Individual sections and guidance on the most common mental health issues are available to download at the bottom of each page. You can also download the full guide: Supporting children and young people in their mental health: A guide for East Sussex schools [Adobe PDF, 797KB] or read online below:
Supporting children and young people in their mental health: A guide for East Sussex schools
Schools’ statutory responsibilities relating to social emotional mental health and wellbeing
Provision and processes relating to children and young people with Social Emotional and Mentalhealth difficulties (SEMH) are defined in the SEND Code of Practice Jan 2015 (the Code). The Code includes comprehensive requirements for all children and young people with SEND including those with SEMH difficulties.
Full guidance on the schools’ role in supporting positive mental health [Adobe PDF, 74KB]
Next, Understanding resilience
The Boingboing Resilience Framework
The Resilience Framework is a handy table that summarises ‘what works’ when supporting children and young people’s resilience according to the Resilience Research base. The Resilience Framework forms a cornerstone of our research and practice. On this page we have pulled together lots of useful links so you can find out all about the Resilience Framework.
Ready, Set, Resilience
Ready, Set, Resilience is a workbook and supporting guidance created to support young people’s resilience aimed at year 9 students. It uses mixture of activities which support individual resilience (beating the odds) and activities to support changing the odds like activism.
Activism is for everyone – and it’s essential for building resilience
I stood there on a warm August day with a sense of hope. People of all ages had come together for Make A Change, the inaugural launch event of the Activist Alliance in Blackpool. And it seemed to have come at just the right time. Things seem to be going from bad to...
Community Report – Climate Change and Mental Health
A full summary of findings from the research project ‘Climate change and mental health; A co-produced study with young people in Blackpool’.
ReMiT: Resilient Minds – Mental health toolkit for young people and toolkit for parents and carers
The Resilient Minds Toolkits are co-produced guides written by young people and parents/carers to support young people’s resilience and mental health. We have co-produced guides for both a Blackpool context and a national context. Find out more here.
Submissions of evidence: Focus on accessibility
This page presents a selection of our submissions of evidence with a focus on those which have considered accessibility.
Resilience Framework for Children and Young People
This is the classic Resilience Framework for children and young people. The Framework summarises a set of ideas and practices that promote resilience. To create it we distilled what the resilience research base said into a handy table that sets out 42 resilient moves that can be made to support children and young people’s resilience. Available in multiple languages.
Resilience Framework Co-produced with Children in Blackpool
The Resilience Framework for Primary School children was co-produced by the Resilience Committee at Marton Primary School, Blackpool. The Marton Primary School children learned some valuable resilience and technological skills during the process, which involved rewording some of the items in a more meaningful way for the children, and we think it looks fab! Also available in Danish, German and Polish.
Blackpool Co-produced Family Resilience Framework
A group of parents and carers from Blackpool, known as the ‘Parents of the Revolution’, have co-produced a family version of the Resilience Framework as part of Blackpool’s town-wide Resilience Revolution. You can also download a one-page version that just contains the Framework or a 2-page version with a short description and some suggestions.
Family Framework Co-produced with Newport Mind
The Family Resilience Framework was designed to support members of the wider family (parents, siblings, carers etc.) and was developed by Rhian Adams, Tiffany Bales, Laura Brown and Sarah Henderson from Newport Mind, with the support of the participants of the Newport Mind Community of Practice. Also available in Italian, Portugese and Spanish.
Resilience Framework for Adults
The Resilience Framework for Adults applies ideas from the resilience evidence base to adult mental health. The adult Framework was developed as part of Josh Cameron’s PhD research into the work-related needs and experiences of people recovering from mental health problems. Also available in French and German.
Supporting children and young people’s mental health – A guide for schools
Supporting children and young people’s mental health: A guide for schools using a resilience based approach, and Supporting children and young people’s mental health during Covid-19 pandemic: A supplementary section.
Resilience Framework for Children and Young People – Black and White
This is the classic Resilience Framework for children and young people produced in black and white in case you, or the young people you support, prefer to colour code it yourselves, or don’t have access to a colour printer. The Resilience Framework sets out 42 resilient moves that can be made to support children and young people’s resilience.
Interactive Resilience Framework
The Interactive Resilience Framework was developed especially for schools with children and young people in mind and has more detail about each idea, including relevant research evidence, suggestions of what to do, and what you people themselves think.
Blank Resilience Framework
This version of the Resilience Framework has been left blank so you can fill in your own items. The Resilience Framework summarises a set of ideas and practices that promote resilience. To create it we distilled what the resilience research base said into a handy table that summarises our approach and sets out 42 resilient moves that can be made to support children, young people, families and adults.
Blackpool ReMiT: Resilient Minds Toolkit – A resilience and mental health guide for parents and carers in the Blackpool area
Blackpool Resilient Minds Toolkits are co-produced guides written by young people and parents/carers in Blackpool to support their resilience and mental health. You can download both ReMiT guides here as well as take part in the ReMiT feedback survey.
Blackpool ReMiT: Resilient Minds Toolkit – A resilience and mental health guide for young people in the Blackpool area
The Resilient Minds Toolkits are co-produced guides written by young people and parents/carers to support young people’s resilience and mental health. You can download both ReMiT guides here as well as take part in the ReMiT feedback survey.
ReMiT: Resilient Minds Toolkit – A resilience and mental health guide for parents and carers
The Resilient Minds Toolkits are co-produced guides written by young people and parents/carers to support their resilience and mental health. You can download both ReMiT guides here designed for a national context as well as take part in the ReMiT feedback survey.