MYA’s RAISE Team in partnership with Liverpool CAMHS Partners has developed a very interactive, award-winning, peer mentoring offer for secondary schools with a focus on mental health. This is called ‘’The TOTEM Course’’ – Talking Openly To Embrace Mental Health’’. So far this 2-day course has been delivered to over 250 mentors across Liverpool, all with great feedback.
Day 1 topics covered with young people:
- Their personal skills, qualities, abilities and areas of development
- Roles and responsibilities of a peer mentor
- What makes a good peer mentor?
- Situations a peer mentor may need to mentee someone in.
- What makes a good/positive role model?
- Having a ‘strategic chat’ with peers in the peer mentor role
- Confidentiality – what does this mean?
- Roleplay and case studies scenarios.
- Resilience: What it means & why it is important to build resilience.
- Mental health – what is it, who’s got it, why do we need to talk about it?
- Mental health and mental illness
- Stigma, myths and facts around mental health and mental illness
- What stresses young people out / what worries them and what effect does this have on young people’s mental health? What can help?
- Mental health continuum – we’re all on it.
- Mental Illnesses – what are they?
- How resilience can help with mental health
- DRAGONS DEN: How do you want peer mentoring to look in YOUR school/youth group? How shall we launch this?! – Young people plan a launch phase as part of silver-level!
- A teacher/leader to be present over the 2 days so they are familiar with the content, so they can support the future delivery of the TOTEM program.
- Have an assigned member(s) of staff in your school that the peer mentors can go to if they need advice or have a conversation that they are worried about. This member of staff will need to have time dedicated to supporting the mentors
- Agree to staff member attending the Whole School Approach network events to share good practice
- To encourage students to give feedback on the conversations their having and provide support where necessary.
- At least 3 people (staff, young people, governors, headteacher etc) to be on the dragon’s den panel for the final hour on day 2!
- To implement the agreed strategy that the peer mentors develop over the two days
- Schools need to think through how they can support peer mentors in light of the conversations they are having.
All young people that take part in the peer mentoring programme will receive a certificate, along with great detail of information on peer mentoring and mental health, and a fun 2 days! Alongside some great outcomes:
- Skills and knowledge of Peer Mentoring
- Knowledge of mental health and resilience
- Confidence and self-esteem
- Improved communication skills
Sign up below if you are interested in learning more about TOTEM for your school.
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