Mental Health Week's “Let's Connect” motto struck a chord in SJS.

St. Julian’s recognised its second Children's Mental Health Week, between Monday 6 - Friday 10 February 2023, in conjunction with the UK's Children's Mental Health Charity “place2be”. The theme of the week this year was “Let's Connect”. We were delighted to offer students, staff and parents the opportunity to engage in a range of interactive activities, highlighting the importance of human connections and the impact they have on our mental health.

Flickr album: Children's Mental Health Week | Height: auto | Theme: Default | Skin: Default Skin

The Secondary “Children Mental Health Week” Activities

Activities in the Secondary School were hosted by the secondary counselling team, Maria Raven-Rudd & Mariana Mangerão. They included a training session for staff during which tutors were given the opportunity to try some of the connection activities their tutees would be completed during the week.

Students engaged in a range of daily activities during tutor time, focusing on; identifying connections, developing skills for building new connections, tools to manage disconnections, and ways to establish connections through diversity.

The counselling team also led an Interactive assembly - Human Connection & The Eye Contact Experiment, attended by students in years 8 - 12. Our year 13 students were offered a specialist assembly on Managing Exam Stress ahead of their mock examinations. For our younger students in Year 7, we planned an interactive workshop to support their understanding and development of age-appropriate social skills. Thank you to our creative arts team, who supported the workshop, lending their expertise in effective role play!

And finally, not forgetting our parents, who showed fantastic support for our interactive workshop on; How to Support Your Child With Connections.

As you can see from the pictures, it has been a busy and very successful week! We look forward to supporting future Children's mental health weeks at St Julian's.

Primary “Children Mental Health Week” Activities

During the Children Mental Health Week, Key Stage 2 staff participated in a presentation by Joana Lobo (Primary Clinical Psychologist) and Ceri Grunewald-Davies (Head of Primary Learning support). Suggestions were given to help introduce and discuss Mental Health and making connections. Specific activities were shared with teachers and teacher assistants to be carried out during this week.

Mrs Lobo and Mrs G. D also held assemblies related to this important week. The students responded with interest and maturity. A big focus was to introduce them to "scaling a problem" and connecting with others if support is needed. Two worry boxes have been set up, and role-play situations were led to help students decide if they needed to post their worries in the boxes.

During mental health week, we trialled the worry boxes and students have participated in activities led by teachers and supported by the Learning support team. Following this activity, positive feedback has been given by students, and the worry boxes have had some posted “problems”.

On Wednesday, Ceri and Joana led a parent workshop related to the theme, “Let's connect.” Main topics were:

• Importance of connections and what we can all do
• Dealing with big emotions
• The difference between misbehaviour and meltdown (including the brain activity involved)
• How parents can support their children in these situations
• Self-regulation, Zones of regulation and strategies.

We were delighted with the turnout and the contributions/discussions that were had. The parents were warm and interested and it was great to share relevant experiences.

Given the relevance of the topic, the Primary aims to lead another parent workshop related to the zones of regulation next term.

Mrs Lobo, Primary Clinical Psychologist and Mrs Grunewald-Davies, Head of Primary Learning Support