Professional Learning

The Scottish Government have just launched their Children and Young People’s Mental Health – Professional Learning Resource. The resource takes a whole school approach centred around prevention and early intervention to promote positive mental health and wellbeing for everyone in the school community. It aims to provide school staff with knowledge and understanding of mental health and wellbeing in schools and a range of opportunities to learn about experiences and advice from practitioners and young people.

There are four main sections split into bitesize topics. The core content should take around 6-7 hours to complete and there are suggestions for further learning. Learners can move through topics at their own time and pace in any order.

It has also been added to the following areas of the Education Scotland website.

NHSGGC have just released their NHSGGC Whole School Approach – self harm. The Knowledge and Skills Framework: a whole school approach to self harm awareness and training has been structured to reflect national training frameworks. It has been developed to support Education Authorities and Schools to consider how they may implement a whole organisation approach to self harm awareness and training.

The document refers to self harm when used as a coping strategy, a response to distress where the individual has no intention to take their own life. Organisations should implement their appropriate safe guarding protocols if they feel a child or young person (C&YP) is in distress or immediate danger. To see how this fits in with our Renfrewshire Mental Health and Wellbeing Policy training for staff, click here.

In order to support you to have a conversation with a child/young person around self-harm, click here to access our new resource – “How to have a conversation about self-harm”.

If you are interested in finding out more about What’s the Harm training, keep up to date with training information through our newsletters.

The Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health has published a podcast in which Dr Jocelyn Meza discusses her co-authored paper ‘Common elements in treatments for youth suicide attempts and self-harm.’ Discussions include: ways to talk about suicide and self-harm in a non-stigmatising way; suicide and self-harm as a global issue and international differences; applying findings from the paper as a child and adolescent mental health professional or practitioner; and research implications.

Common Elements in Treatments for Youth Suicide Attempts and Self-harm – ACAMH

If you’re looking for information around a whole school approach to mental health, the Mentally Healthy Schools website has lots of information to help. It includes:

Education Scotland have created resources to support Early Years practitioners. This includes professional learning available on their website.

Whole school approach to self harm awareness

MHWB Toolkit for Staff (2019) – Revised