Utilising the Noble Truths to support work with children and young people on mental health issues
Accepting
When a child or young person is struggling they need to know that they are “accepted” fully for their struggles and not judged. This can be hard if they are managing those struggles in a way that is different to your own way of managing. Through “acceptance” we can try and empathise, step into their experience and be alongside them in their difficulties. Acceptance is also about finding a place where you can accept how you feel about something that you are faced with, and finding someone within your school with whom you can talk that through. Working with sensitive and challenging issues can take its toll and you may feel difficult feelings that are not beneficial for the child or young person to know about, yet equally are valid for you and important to express to someone with whom you feel safe. If all adults in your school are striving to make relationships with students who are struggling, it’s important to have a system for them to also get the support they need.
Commitment
Commitment emphasises the importance of trust, reliability and predictability. With so many demands it can be challenging to maintain the commitment and tough at times. The Resilience Framework highlights the importance of offering long-term commitment in supporting children and young people to overcome the odds. Before entering into a conversation or reaching out to a child or young person, consider whether you are in a position to commit and see the work through. It may be useful to get management acknowledgement of the time and focus that this commitment might involve. Hanging on in there and being consistent will be important to the child or young person and support the trust between you.
Conserving
Conserving supports the taking of positive and negative experiences that the child or young person has experienced and utilising them to the best effect. What has worked well in the past? Notice growth and change in their progress, and understand and embrace the mechanisms that supported that growth and change, in a way that they can use it to their advantage to make resilient decisions in the future.
Enlisting
Enlisting is the idea of not doing this on your own… who else is it worth getting on board to support the work? This needs to be considered carefully and strategically in terms of the benefit to the child or young person, and to ensure they don’t feel overloaded with other professionals or interventions. Enlisting also refers to how you can enlist the different parts of yourself; when do you bring in your fun side, when is the serious side necessary, do you feel able to stretch your comfort zone as a practitioner? Sometimes it is also important to enlist a different approach – if something is not working in a particular way, then how about trying to do it differently! Enlisting can expose us to a range of ideas and opportunities that are of benefit to you as a practitioner and ultimately the child or young person you are supporting.
Full guidance on utilising the Noble Truths [Adobe PDF, 87KB]
Next, Other considerations
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.
