Local schools are working together with Staffordshire County Council, Friends of Josh and the Hope Project to support the mental health and well-being of their pupils.
Helping Our Pupils Emotions (HOPE) offers training focusing on mental health, self-harm, helping skills & tools to measure & monitor Children and Young Peoples emotional wellbeing. Ongoing support and development through regular meetings & supervision is provided. A team from the schools, including parents, teachers and support staff all received this training last October and are now working in schools to support pupils. Ideally, we want to create an environment in all our schools in Stone where pupils, teachers and parents are in open discussion about mental health and well-being.
“It has been heart-warming to see the willingness of parent/carers to help each other. They are listening, giving advice and sharing experiences with each other. This helps parent/carers to not feel on their own or like there’s something wrong with them or their child. I feel very privileged to lead this project and see it evolve”. -Rachel Rayner, HOPE Project Lead- hopeproject2016@outlook.com
Typically, support from the HOPE team for pupils either individually or in groups is provided for a range of concerns such as anxiety, stress, self-harm, behavioural issues, bereavement and low-level mental health problems that do not yet require other support.
Following on from the success of this pilot, we would now like to open the HOPE project up to more parents and carers and so have organised three informal workshops for parents to get together with members of the HOPE team. The aim of these workshops is for you as parents and carers to tell us how you would like to be involved – what support you would like to receive or think the school should provide to help your child or children regarding their mental health and well-being. We would also like to know if some of you would like to form a group to meet occasionally (in person or through social media/online group).
Dates and Venue to meet:
Stone Community Fire Station, The Fillybrooks, Stone ST15 ODN
- Thursday 20th June 2019 from 6-7.30pm
- Saturday 22nd June 2019 from 10-11.30am
- Tuesday 25th June 2019 from 1.30-3pm
Please register your attendance at: sarabuckley41@gmail.com
