First Mental Health Champion for schools to speak at SCHOOLS NorthEast Summit 2015
SCHOOLS NorthEast is delighted to officially announce Natasha Devon MBE, the first ever Government appointed Mental Health Champion for schools, as one of the keynote speakers at this year’s Summit taking place on 15 October.
This is part of our drive to explore these issues in depth and improve children’s mental health, and Natasha will be ranging over the different ways schools and teachers in the North East can tackle their widespread concerns.
A columnist for Cosmopolitan and former model who has battled bulimia, Natasha will be sharing her own manifesto and guidance with our audience at this year’s annual Summit.
Believing that a healthy body helps to ensure a healthy mind, Natasha is currently developing 35 10-minute exercises for teachers to instruct pupils to perform in the classroom. This comes after a recent report by the Youth Sport Trust revealed pupils were offered less than two hours of PE a week in 2013-14.
Their research, published in the Class of 2035 report, also revealed that in the North East and Scotland 38% of pupils would like to do more exercise/play more sports than they currently are.
Always there when I need you, a reported published by the NSPCC today also revealed that in 2014/15 there were 35,244 counselling sessions about low self-esteem/unhappiness with young people who rang the charity’s ChildLine. The five most commons specific concerns were anxiety (25%), self-esteem issues (12%), lack of self-confidence (11%), social withdrawal (7%), body image (6%).
Hoping that teachers will embrace the initiative, Natasha told The Sunday Times: “It is a little bit of extra training for them. We can boost youngsters’ self-esteem but it needs to be reinforced by parents and teachers.”
You can read the entire interview here.
If you would like to hear from the new Mental Health Champion for schools (and many other fantastic speakers such as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw) book your place by emailing us today.