Children’s Mental Health Week (7 to 13 February 2022)

HeadStart Kent supports young people, schools, community settings and parents and carers to develop their emotional wellbeing and resilience. MoodSpark, a website designed by young people for young people embraces this concept and provides young people with tools, information, and guidance, enabling them to take ownership of their emotional wellbeing.

During Children’s Mental Health Week we are  promoting to parents and carers the support available to them on the Kent Resilience Hub, which includes information, resources as well as free training. In addition for this week only, parents and carers  can access the Wellbeing toolkit for parents developed by The Education People for free using the code ‘headstart21’.

For everyone that works with young people, we are also able to share The Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health SWAY. This is a useful resource regardless of whether you work in a school, are from a community or voluntary group, or are a practitioner working with children and young people. It provides a run through of where support around emotional wellbeing and mental health can be accessed in Kent, for individual young people, groups of young people and whole schools.

A key feature is the iThrive model infographic identifying appropriate services that can be accessed within each of the four categories of support; Getting Advice, Getting Help, Getting More Help and Getting Risk Support. The services section breaks down each service so that you can easily see; who is eligible, what the support offer is and how to access it as well as being linked to each of the service’s referral pathways. Making it really clear and easy for professionals to see which service they can access for a child or young person at the right point in time for them.

NHS, council and community organisations are working together with young people in Kent and Medway to share information on social media about local services. Everyone is asked to help in Children’s Mental Health week by sharing information with children and young people they know or to help spread the word on social media using the #CHMHWKM and schools can keep up to date through our Facebook page

Also, Kooth is hosting  the community spaces of its website and offering lots of opportunities for young people to reach out to others to share experiences, explore their feelings, and offer or receive support from peers. These short videos explain more about the Kooth Magazine and Kooth Forums:

• Kooth Magazine
• Kooth Forum