Children’s Mental Health Week 2024 is from 5-11 February 2024. This year’s theme is My Voice Matters.
Place2Be launched the mental health awareness week in 2015 to empower, equip and give a voice to every child in the UK.
Every year Children’s Mental Health Week sees hundreds of schools, children, parents and carers taking part. Now in its 10th year, we hope to encourage more people than ever to help us reach our goal that no child or young person has to face a mental health problem alone.
https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/
Key activities in school will be:
- Morning Meetings – there will be a slide available for every morning next week promoting mental health support, wellbeing, signposting for help etc.
- Benton Park Mindmate Wellbeing Ambassadors launch- Years 8/9/10 will be receiving a presentation (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) to launch our new Mindmate Wellbeing Ambassadors programme and invite students to become an ambassador for the school next half term.
- https://youtu.be/Llac2vJlH7o this short film put together by 6 leading mental health charities and will hopefully bring the week to a close in an engaging way!
Things to do at home;
Further support for young people;
Studies have shown that children’s mental health is declining. In a classroom of 30, 5 children now are likely to have a mental health problem.
As a school we are able to support with students mental health. We have a Mental health team who run a Mental health drop in every Tuesday lunchtime that students can access if they feel they would like further support. There are posters around school advertising this to students.
Young people can receive support online face-to-face from a number of different services:
Kooth:
Kooth is a website that offers mental health support for young people and is suitable for those aged between 10 and 18 years old.
Kooth is free to use and is available 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. The site is anonymous which allows young people to speak openly about their feelings.
There is no formal referral, users can make a self-referral by answering a couple of simple questions.
Kooth allows its users to speak to qualified counsellors through chat-based messaging or booked sessions. These sessions are available from noon until 10pm on weekdays and from 6:00pm until 10:00pm on weekends.
Users who have other forms of counselling can still access support from Kooth and support can be adapted for users who are SEND.
For more information please visit: www.kooth.com
Safezone:
Safe Zone is a mental health crisis support service for 11-17-year olds and their parents/carers. Safe Zone is staffed by experienced crisis workers who can offer 45 minutes of emotional and practical support. It is available to anyone living in Leeds.
Safe Zone provides both face-to-face contact and telephone support and has recently extended its hours and is now open from 17:00pm to 10:00pm on Monday, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
This service is free and confidential. The appointments are made by referrals and referrals run on a first come, first served basis.
Referrals can be made by the young person, a parent/carer or a professional.
Those who are 11 and 12 are encouraged to attend with their parent/carer and need parental permission to attend if you self-refer.
Those who are 13 and over are able to self-refer.
For more information please visit: https://www.lslcs.org.uk/services/safe-zone/
