Children's Mental Health Awareness Week 2021

Pupils across the school have been marking Children’s Mental Health Week with the theme ‘Express Yourself’. Children’s Mental Health Week was created to highlight how important children and young people’s mental health is. Throughout the week, teachers have discussed with the children healthy ways of expressing themselves and reinforcing how self-expression can help boost feelings of well-being. On 3 February the school ran a ‘Dress to Express Yourself' day where children could dress in a colourful way to express how they are feeling or wear their clothes inside out to show how what we see on the outside might not always reflect what is going on inside.

Alongside this, the school community has raised money for Place2Be, a children’s mental health charity with over 25 years’ experience working with children, families and staff in UK schools. The charity provides mental health support in schools through one to one group counselling using tried and tested methods backed by research. Thanks to generous donations, we have raised £210 so far. If you would like to donate, please follow the Just Giving link. https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/sjcsdresstoexpress.

Place2Be provide schools with lessons ideas and activities to encourage children and teachers highlight mental health.  One activity is to wear an item of clothing inside out as a reminder to always be kind, as you never know how someone is feeling on the inside. Our Music Gap, Archie Inns, dyed his hair pink in support of the charity and as he commented, ‘All of you are able to express yourselves in ways that make you happy and fulfilled. So go and write that song that’s been brewing for weeks, or paint that painting that is etched in your mind or simply feel comfortable with any and all the stuff you do that makes you, you.’

Creative expression has been one way the children have shown their feelings this week in PSHEE lessons, morning Meets and through tutor discussions. In T2, the children drew a new classmate monster and rolled dice to see the number of body parts as a means of showing how we all express ideas and use our imaginations differently. Form 4 children designed their own ‘Express Yourself’ posters having watched Place2Be’s Royal Patron HRH The Duchess of Cambridge’s video message to mark the start of the Children’s Mental Health Week. Some of the younger children began art lessons with mindful mark-making and many children enjoyed creating their own ‘squiggle’ drawings during PSHEE lessons. Assemblies across the school also focused on ways of improving the children’s emotional well-being.

For more information: Place2B