City schoolkids talk wellbeing with Leitch
PUPILS at a Glasgow primary school had the unique opportunity to interview a prominent figure in the fight against coronavirus during Children’s Mental Health week.
Scotland’s national clinical director Professor Jason Leitch engaged with the children at Oakwood Primary in Easterhouse who told him about the support provided in school by national charity Place2Be.
The organisation has been supporting pupils, parents and staff at Oakwood for seven years.
It has been reaching out to Scottish families at both primary and secondary level since 2002 and helped 22,000 people across Glasgow, Edinburgh, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Tayside and Ayrshire since then.
After hearing about Place2Be’s support network within the Glasgow school, Professor Leitch said: “I wish that had existed when I was a child.
“In fact, I wish that existed for me now, never mind when I was at school. It sounds fantastic.”
Place2Be launched the first ever Children’s Mental Health Week in 2015 to shine a spotlight on the importance of children and young people’s wellbeing.
This year’s theme was to “express yourself”. One of the pupils asked Professor Leitch what he does to express himself.
He explained: “I was never very good at sport. I tried my best, I was always willing, but I was never very good.
“I was in some clubs, but I was never good enough to be in the teams. So now what I do is I run, I do two laps of the park, so it keeps me physically healthy and helps my mental health. It makes me relax a little bit.”
Another pupil asked Professor Leitch what he does to relax.
He added: “Not much spare time to relax I’m afraid, I wish there was. Number one is running and audio books. The other thing I do is spend time with my wife, and Zoom calls with my bigger family, so my mum, dad and my sister. Lynn and I cook together a lot.
“The other one is that I try and sleep well, because it would be easy with my job to work into the early hours of the morning or to get up too early, so I try and get eight hours sleep. If I can run, sleep eight hours and eat three meals a day, I’m doing pretty well.”
The Scottish Government has launched a package of support for school staff, developed by the Workforce Support workstream of the Covid-19 Education Recovery Group.
As part of this package, Place2Be is partnering with Education Scotland to offer its Place2Think programme for free to teachers and school leaders across Scotland.
Participants join a small group of peers remotely on a monthly basis, to reflect on the emotional impact of their work, how emotional and mental health factors can impact on learning for some children and young people, and to explore possibilities for responding to issues they’re facing.
Teachers can and sign up at place2think find out more place2be.org.uk/