Reports are increasing about the fragile mental health of our young people. In disadvantaged areas the pressure of examinations and growing up in a complex World are further impacted on by poverty. Life is often more stressful for disadvantaged families and their children.
Photo Credit: Gian Luigi Perrella via Flickr cc
There is not always enough money for food, electricity, gas or clothing further increasing stress levels. Depression, self-harm, drug dependency, domestic violence can be either cause or effect in a negative spiral of increasing mental health problems. For some of our pupils there is an issue of readiness for learning at an emotional and psychological level. A lack of support services, particularly Children & Adolescent Mental Health Services, can leave schools isolated in attempting to deal with these issues.
Blackpool have already been successful in taking forward a bid to the Big Lottery for its pilot HeadStart project for 10-14 year olds securing five hundred thousand pounds and is now looking at expanding the programme to involve more schools. Marc Chevreau (Blackpool Specialist Senior Educational Psychologist) explained the basis for the programme which uses Bronfenbrenner and the socio-ecological model of human functioning to resolve difficulties and enhance well-being through building strengths and reducing risks in young people’s lives. An extract of his blog post is below and resilience is being used here as a response to chronic failures and difficulties rather than simply a poor grade or in class challenge:
- Individuals are only ‘resilient’ if they are managing adversity.
- Resilient functioning arises from a dynamic interplay between the individual and the environment; it is not, thus, a simple personality characteristic.
- A resilient response is likely to be the result of a balance of risk and protective factors. Personal social and emotional skills – such as problem-solving skills – are an important component but so are the contributions of home, school and community environments. Resilience is ‘domain-specific’ – a young person may be resilient in the school context but not at home.
- The resolution of difficulty and the enhancement of well-being may arise from change in the individual, changes in the environment or a subtle combination of both.
- Programmes should be considered at each of the levels of individual, family, school and community.
Mark Chevereau (2015) Blackpool HeadStart Resilience Model
Whilst these bullet points are probably not new to many teachers and support staff presenting them so clearly and simply is massively helpful. With resilience being seen as domain specific, how will the difficulties in different areas of a pupil’s life and their varying responses impact on her/his school outcomes? Can in-school Growth Mindset programmes compensate for family and community issues or is a one dimensional approach doomed to failure particularly for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.
How holistic does a school’s Growth Mindset work need to be before it will have sufficient efficacy?
We hope to be involved, as a Trust, in the next phase of Blackpool’s work which will afford us a certain level of funding for a number of years. There are big questions that need answering about how we could most effectively use this funding and the exit strategy from the programme. If you had some extra resources how would you use them? Without additional resources would you be willing to radically restructure and rethink your employment of staff to include mental health and social workers as part of your on-site core team? Resilience matters and in tomorrow’s post I’m hoping to explore some of the complexity exposed to us by the wonderful Mark Healy (@cijane02) when thinking about developing a healthy minds, healthy mindsets programme.
Blackpool the most deprived LA in England (2015). Resilience Matters and in Blackpool more than most places.
#SaturdayThunk is based on something I’ve been thinking about, discussing, working on or has been topical that week. The thunk is designed to be bite sized and will deliberately be kept short. It will take one small issue or an aspect of something much bigger. The intention is for it to be read in two minutes as you’re relaxing or busy running around on you day off.
@LeadingLearner 
I believe that my work on “Learning Intelligence” (LQ) could have a significant impact on the outcomes of the project. LQ is about enabling managing your learning environment to meet your learning needs. It is more than a coping strategy, it is a way of thinking and behaving that puts you in control of your environment. LQ consists of a set of skills, attitudes, attributes and behaviours providing a narrative for overcoming challenges within the environment. You can see an introduction here: http://wp.me/p2LphS-3p My work has moved on considerable since this early stage and there are 30+ articles involving LQ on my blog.
Please let me know how I can get involved if you think there is some way LQ can help these young people. My experience shows it can.
Kevin (e-mail: kevin@ace-d.co.uk)
Posted by 4c3d | October 31, 2015, 8:11 amThanks Kevin. Please keep commenting and nudging my thinking.
Posted by ExecutiveHT | October 31, 2015, 8:17 amDo you want me to send you an introductory leaflet on LQ?
Posted by 4c3d | October 31, 2015, 8:24 amHappy to have a look. Please send via the blog.
Posted by ExecutiveHT | October 31, 2015, 8:29 amNot able to see how I can send you a pdf file as an attachment. Any ideas?
Posted by 4c3d | October 31, 2015, 8:33 amDon’t worry. I’ll download from your blog link.
Posted by ExecutiveHT | October 31, 2015, 8:34 amhttp://wp.me/p2LphS-3p
Posted by 4c3d | October 31, 2015, 8:54 amThank you for this Saturday’s Thunk. I am particularly interested in the notion of the ‘how’ to effectively integrate social services, mental health education and health into an innovative restructure. As a primary head who has just radically restructured a large inner city primary school to create a Family Team, with a core focus to run programmes which remove barriers to learning, address complex issues and effectively signpost family to extended services and social Capital across the city – this has really struck a chord. The lack of specialist support for mental health within schools is significant and very much a real challenge in terms of striking a balance between developing meta-cognition, readiness for learning and effective use of particular domains. I am very intertested to learn more about Mark Healy’s resilience model and the Blackpool project. Thank you for the early morning thinking!
Posted by prihead | October 31, 2015, 8:59 amSounds like you have done some really interesting work with the restructuring. Mark’s work out tomorrow
Posted by ExecutiveHT | October 31, 2015, 9:26 amFascinating idea, thank you.
Or is it the other way around?
Posted by Brian | October 31, 2015, 9:35 amI think both is likely to be right response . It’s too complex to be a straightforward linear relationship. Possibly best seen as a spiral maybe?
Posted by ExecutiveHT | October 31, 2015, 9:41 amThank you for sharing. I feel sparked & excited to hear more about this work. I lead the Early Help strategy at our secondary Academy which has been constructed to ‘catch’ our at risk students. An initiative such as this could really compliment the work we have undertaken
Posted by SUSAN WATMOUGH | October 31, 2015, 10:34 amSpent a happy (and heated) Thursday evening debating with my brother (maths teacher) and sister (school chaplain) about this issue. I (AHT in charge of PP) thought we all disagreed but your post brings the three arguments together! Turns out we just need to join up the thinking somehow! . ..there’s the rub!
Posted by Anna Back | October 31, 2015, 8:53 pmI thinking caring enough to want to try harder is a precursor to growth mindset
Posted by @cazzwebbo | November 2, 2015, 6:23 am