Loreto Catholic Grammar School for Girls have used the focus on mental health over the past year to come up with a series of actions to help support their peers and raise awareness of the issue across the school.
They shared the work at a recent visit to the school by National Training and Development Worker, Marc Besford. The visit followed on from a previous one where the young leaders set out how they planned on doing their own mental health pupil survey, in order to understand the reality of young people at the school and were also helping their Chaplain, Sue Perkins, with developing a peer-to-peer mentoring scheme.
Both the survey and mentoring scheme are now well underway and have made a really positive impact on the well-being of the young people in the school. Establishing new support systems and resilience amongst young people was an important part of the YCW’s National Campaign, MIND! The Gap. One of the aims was to see a continuing impact once the campaign was officially over and these changes in the school should see this happen.
Added to this has been the call from the YCW leaders in Loreto to open up access to tutors in the school for mental health support. The school is now promoting drop-in sessions for students to go and discuss any concerns, with mental health being a key focus.
In response to the visit, Marc Besford said: “It is fantastic to see the group at Loreto working through the YCW Method so well and producing clear actions in response to what they have seen and judged. As I go round the country I hope to see more good work like this happening.”
