Building a Mental Health Leads Network: Lessons from Kerry Bridges

Setting up a network for Mental Health Leads

Intro

Kerry Bridges has been the Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead at Archbishop Temple Church of England High School in Preston, Lancashire since 2021 but part of the Pastoral and Safeguarding Teams for a great deal longer. She is happy to talk about supporting wellbeing in schools all day long and has a particular interest in staff wellbeing.

Blog

In 2023, I decided to start up a Senior Mental Health Lead’s Support Network in my area. In this series of 6 blogs, I talk about why I wanted to do that (and how it didn’t always go to plan) in the hope that it will give you some inspiration if you would like to do something similar. 

If you do and would like some support or to share your journey, please feel free to get in touch with me. I would love to hear your stories.

In last month’s blog, I described how I had had the idea to set up the network and invited people to attend but hardly anyone came. At that point, I might well have decided that it wasn’t such a great idea after all and that perhaps nobody wanted to be part of a group like mine. In fact, it really did make me even more determined to succeed. I had looked for a group like mine and hadn’t been able to find one. I had told people that the group was running and I really didn’t want to let anyone down. I decided that there must be another way to find the people we wanted to support.

I have told you about this because if you are thinking of starting a group, don’t be surprised if something similar happens. Perhaps it might not, particularly as there are more groups around even now and more people are accessing their training Senior mental health lead training - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). However, if it does happen, please don’t be despondent. Go back to the drawing board, there will definitely be something you can change.

What I decided was that I had relied too much on other people to be spreading the word. Our group now grows with every meeting and people are always inviting friends and colleagues to come along, but originally, I had just gone onto the PMHW group meeting and expected them to reach lots of relevant people. Reflecting back, I realise that I did not really know about marketing (I’m a teacher so it’s not really a surprise) and how hard you have to work to start the ball rolling. I thought I would just tell people and they would come along. I didn’t really have a good strategy as to how to contact these people or where they might be. And I really had no idea who to ask.

Armed with this lack of knowledge, it is quite amazing that the group has got off the ground! Nevertheless, never one to know when to give in gracefully, I decided that I would just contact all the schools myself. I got the email addresses for all the Headteachers in schools in the Lancashire area from our Head’s amazing PA, and I spent 2 hours one evening sending emails to every single one of them. I had no idea if they would even get through, but I had to do something. I spoke to other people who I did know in schools and got email addresses from them for the Senior Mental Health leads or DSLs. If anyone told me they worked in children’s mental health in school, they got an email. In short, if you were in Lancashire, the chances are you got an email from me!

The good news is that people are still joining our group every month. These people’s schools will have been a part of my original email list and yet have never heard of the group until someone mentions it to them. I have learned that email marketing is effective (some stats here if you are interested: The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Stats for 2023 (hubspot.com) but it doesn’t guarantee to get to the person you want it to get to. I’ve learned that doesn’t matter as long as you send a lot of emails! If you want people to come along to your group, you have got to be able to accept that you will also invest a lot of time and energy in inviting people who won’t.

And you have to keep going when it might well be past time to give up!