Maricourt Wins "Pupil Mental Health Initiative of the Year"
TES School Awards 2022
It was a brilliant event and we are really proud to have won Pupil Mental Health Initiative of the Year 2022 and the Tes Awards. Mr Managan, Mrs Lawler, Mrs Macken and Mr Clarke went to London to attend the prestigious event on 17th June. Read our entry below
Covid has been a really challenging time for the whole world and the disruption to people’s lives has had a real impact. From changing routines, lack of connection, family pressures, loss,loneliness, lost friendships, the list goes on. So how can a school respond to the needs when everyone's story is so different? We at Maricourt started right from the start with Key Workers Children and focused on resilience. From this we quickly realised that resilience training was needed for a wider range of students. We conducted a whole school survey to identify the key cohorts of students. We conducted resilience training with 400 students across all year groups. For those students who the resilience training was not enough, we teamed up with Everton in the Community to introduce a 20 hour self-esteem and personal development programme for 60 year 8 and 9 students, who were most impacted by the pandemic and were finding it harder to bounce back. From this we did a further survey to identify that five students needed more in-depth support, so they received support from the learning mentor, two of which were referred on to the schools Early Mental Health Practitioner and finally this left us with one student who needed CBT therapy. This funnel approach allowed us to support the students the best we could. However, we quickly realised that this work needed to be continued. Relationships and levels of respect had changed. Students had lost out on the ability to connect and had increased freedoms online. We did a survey to identify how people were finding the changes in attitudes. This led to a whole school Call it Out programme. From here this led to the recruitment of Wellbeing Champions who have recently launched their own podcast, (see link below) took part in a national respect campaign (No place for Hate Campaign, with Radio City) and teamed up with a coaching company to extend the wellbeing resources (see Spitfire Horizon link below). Our school website has its own designated area for wellbeing with excellent toolkits and directories for all the Maricourt stakeholders. We have recently been asked to talk at the Sefton Mental Health Conference to showcase the fantastic mental health and wellbeing initiatives around school. The future is ours to write and we will continue to put mental health and wellbeing at the very centre of the culture and ethos within our school. This Year we have also achieved the Wellbeing Award for Schools, which focuses on promoting emotional wellbeing and positive mental health (WAS Award).
No place for hate campaign Link
Horizon partnership video
Wellbeing Champions podcast
Maricourt Catholic High School & Sixth Form Centre - Maricourt Minds
Maricourt Minds- Grow in Self-Esteem Podcast - Self-esteem growth | Free Listening on Podbean App
Website
Maricourt Catholic High School & Sixth Form Centre - Wellbeing