Building a Support Network for Senior Mental Health Leads: Strategies and Success Stories

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. 

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. 

In my last blog, I wrote about finding relevant speakers and making sure that the group stays relevant. It can be tricky to balance this when we have some people who have attended from the beginning and new members every month. I don’t want the same people to come every time, but I am aware that we need to be inviting people that can add value to the group. Last time, I wrote about the commissioned services that we have links with. This time, I wanted to share what I did to look for other people who we might work well with.

Since the group was now growing, we had more of a snowball effect. People were talking about us to colleagues and more people were coming along to attend. Our local EPO (Education Partnership Officer What is TASS - Lancashire County Council) contacted me to talk about the group and shared it in her newsletter. Once more, we were bringing new people in.

At this point, I read a book about Boy’s Mental Health (Boys Do Cry: Improving Boys' Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools: Amazon.co.uk) I felt that this was something that I was not covering as well as I would like to in my school. I decided I would look around and see what was available which led me to X (Twitter) and The Preston Men’s Mental Health Network Preston Men’s Mental Health Network / X). Again, if you are not in our area, I am sure there will be a similar group near you. Hazel from the group put me in touch with the incredible Sam Tyrer and Change Talks (Change Talks : Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust (lscft.nhs.uk)) and we had a brilliant presentation from Mindset by Dave. 

Whilst you may not be able to access Sam and Dave in your area, I am sure there will be groups around who would love to link in with you. X has been a great place to find people but I also recommend linking in with your local CFWS (Children and Family Wellbeing Service - Lancashire County Council).

At one of our High School meetings, I met Susie from Lancashire Positive Minds. Susie is an amazing parent who saw a gap in the support for families in the same way that I saw a gap in the support for education professionals. She and Jenny from the group came to present at our last meeting after I was looking for someone to support our parents. Their group does amazing work in our local community and it was humbling to hear from them.

Sam and Dave and Susie and Jenny don’t (yet) run groups that are accessible in every area but there will be people like them near you who are happy to come and talk to your group. We have so many people who are kind enough to come and work with us and you will be able to find people in your area too who are just as amazing. You really only have to ask.