To coincide with Mental Health Awareness week (14-20 May), the University of Portsmouth is hosting a special event to provide greater understanding of a range of mental issues faced by children.
The Mental Health in Childhood and Education (MICE) Hub and School of Education and Childhood Studies at the University is holding its second Mental Health Awareness event on Thursday 17 May from 9:30am to 3pm.
This event will focus on mental health and wellbeing from early childhood to adulthood and is in response to proposals in a recent green paper to transform NHS mental health care for young people. These proposals are based on three key elements: a teacher at every school and college becoming its designated lead for mental health; help for schools from new mental health support teams; and the guarantee of help within four weeks.
The purpose of our mental health event is to add to the ongoing debate on how we can best support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people, by specifically focussing on issues faced by vulnerable groups of children.
The focus of the day is ‘Children’s Well-being and Lived Experiences of Health and Well-being’ and will feature two keynote talks:
‘A Good Childhood? Children’s well-being in the UK’ by Larissa Pople, Senior Researcher and expert in children’s well-being and poverty at the Children’s Society, London; co-author of the ‘Good Childhood Report’.
‘Attempting to get at the lived experience of health and well-being: working with interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)’ by Professor Jonathan Smith, Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birbeck, University of London.
Dr Wendy Sims-Schouten, Reader (Associate Professor) in Childhood Studies and Head of the Mental Health in Childhood and Education (MICE), said: “The purpose of our mental health event is to add to the ongoing debate on how we can best support the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people, by specifically focussing on issues faced by vulnerable groups of children, such as children in care, and children on the margins of society and offering an insight into barriers and possible solutions.”
As well as the keynote talks, there will be panel discussions in which members of the academic community share their research on mental health and wellbeing. In the afternoon, the School of Education and Childhood Studies will launch its new IPA (interpretative phenomenological analysis) Forum, with a specific focus on work around mental health and wellbeing.