Headstart South Tees - Supporting Children and Young Peoples Resilience

‘Giving all children and young people in South Tees the necessary support to build resilience to achieve good emotional health’

Headstart was introduced as a South Tees Public Health service in Middlesbrough in 2013 and extended into Redcar and Cleveland in 2019. The purpose to –

• Support young people aged 0-19 to cope better in difficult circumstances and do well in school and in life.

• Build resilience in young people to prevent the onset of common mental health problems.

• Learn from different approaches and contribute to an evidence base for investment in prevention and early intervention.

• Develop an early intervention and prevention model to provide support in school, at home, in the community and virtually.

• Develop a co-production model with children and their families.

The HeadStart delivery model is predicated on evidence-based Boing Boing resilience therapy (Hart and Blincow). This was chosen as it is an easily understood framework that avoids therapeutic language to make it meaningful and accessible to a wide audience.

“There is no doubt that HeadStart has had a positive impact on the culture of school. Staff have an increased awareness of the importance of pupil well-being”

— School Leader

The HeadStart service seeks to support children and young people in the home, community, school and digitally. Due to capacity and sources of funding the majority of service delivery has taken place in schools and colleges.

A system wide Academic Resilience Approach is used within educational settings. This enables and empowers an ability to build and improve emotional resilience to:

• Diminish the difference academically for the most disadvantaged young people

• Improve attendance and behaviours

• Prevent mental health problems escalating

• Support young people to access appropriate help early

This is done across three key areas -

· People – from the pupils and parents to the whole staff group, even the caretakers

· Strategy and leadership including governance, policy, senior leadership

· Systems and structure including information management, behaviour systems, support structures, and so on.

Schools are supported to audit their current provision; identifying good practice and areas for improvement. Academic resilience training is provided to embed an asset- based approach across the whole school.

A range of group interventions are available to all schools and colleges and address issues such as year 6/7 transition, boy’s emotional well-being and anxiety.

“HeadStarters have enabled the school to engage with pupils who are passionate about emotional health and develop them to become leaders and peer supporters.”

— Headteacher

An essential component of HeadStart delivery is the involvement of children and young people. Through the HeadStarters educational pathway they are upskilled in becoming emotional well-being champions; providing peer support and leading on school and college projects. There are currently 1,500 training HeadStarters in South Tees from primary, secondary and 6th form colleges.