You don’t need to have a particular challenge in your life for it to be important that you look after yourself - and looking after yourself comes in many forms, says teacher Roseann Cartledge. It comes in having fun and trying something new, getting enough sleep and taking regular exercise.
But it’s also about getting help quickly when serious issues emerge.
“The message about wellbeing is a wide one,” she says.
Cartledge is a principal teacher of pupil support at Mearns Castle High School in East Renfrewshire who has been seconded to run the school’s Wellbeing Hub.
The hub was set up in response to the “huge demand” for mental health support from students when they returned to school in August 2021.
The 2021-22 school year turned out to be the first not blighted by national lockdowns since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. However, the virus still loomed large in schools and, as Mearns Castle High headteacher Stuart Clark says, it was clear “prioritising support for wellbeing would be crucial”.
‘Huge demand’ for mental health support
In June 2021 the EIS teaching union predicted “a huge increase” in the need for mental health support for pupils, who it said had “experienced grief and loss, have lived with stressed parents, have been subjected to domestic abuse, hunger and so many other issues”.
Cartledge says: “I had never seen a term like it [autumn term in 2021] and we were all thinking, ‘How are we going to maintain this level of support?’”
A key part of the school’s response - which Clark stresses has been “very much a team effort” - was the establishment of its dedicated and fully staffed Wellbeing Hub.
The hub is an oasis of calm created in a previously rundown social area at the school, and it delivers one-to-one sessions and group work, as well as a variety of whole-school wellbeing activities.
It is run by Cartledge, who also still has a teaching commitment for around three periods a day, and is staffed by three full-time wellbeing support assistants, who come from a range of backgrounds. One is a former teacher; another was involved in youth work before joining the team.
The school spends its Pupil Equity Fund allocation of £44,000 on staffing, and supplements that through support from the Young Person’s Guarantee.
Between December 2021 and June 2022, 86 students were referred to the hub by the school’s staff for group work or one-on-one support. So far this year there have been 64 referrals, with around 10 student self-referrals.
Students are referred for a variety of reasons - it can be because of anxiety or self-harm or low mood, attendance issues or bereavement.
Interventions vary in terms of intensity but one go-to resource that staff use with students is a cognitive behavioural therapy programme, Living Life to the Full. This programme is also delivered by the school’s teachers in S1 as part of personal and social education, and now parents are being trained in it, too, so they also understand how to build resilience in their children.
Cartledge says: “[In the hub] we plan our day around who we are meeting. We might have one-on-one meetings with young people or group sessions on managing exam stress or relaxation groups and then we would also have someone on every period for drop-ins.
“A young person might be on a drop-in card, which means if they feel anxious in class they can come for a wee 10-minute drop-in, just based on their need in that moment. And sometimes staff members might send someone down as well with a little note saying, ‘Can this person please have some time out in the hub?’”
The hub also has a group of S6 students, known as hub ambassadors, who run activities including homework support. Monday guitar club is also run in the hub by a senior student.
This week, because it is Children’s Mental Health Week, there are wellbeing activities on offer across the whole school, from how to make a pedometer to count your steps in science, to karaoke in the art department.
Staff are also being offered a range of “be kind to your mind” events, including a yoga class after school delivered by Cartledge, who is a trained instructor.
Clark says the hub and “wider wellbeing supports within the school” are making an impact. “We have seen attendance of our very lowest attenders increase, alongside young people accessing support for positive destinations who had previously really struggled to engage at all,” he adds.
Recently the school’s work on wellbeing was recognised when it became the first secondary in Scotland to achieve the gold standard in the School Mental Health Award, which is delivered by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools.
Cartledge says that, in the course of her career, she has seen “huge changes” in young people’s mental health - increased anxiety, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. The causes can be wide-ranging, she says, from concern about the environment and the economy to exam stress.
But she emphasises that the solution is not always complicated.
“Sometimes young people just need reminding that they do have the capacity to help themselves. We all need reminding of that sometimes,” Cartledge says.
“There are ways of looking after ourselves as adults, where we know it’s the right thing to do but still we don’t always go to the gym; we don’t always exercise; we don’t always eat well or sleep well. Sometimes we are on our phones too much.
“So sometimes just reminders of the basics of wellbeing keep us balanced and maintaining that equilibrium.”
