Wellbeing help and advice

Mental health is a hugely important consideration for young adults in today’s society.

We are seeing an ‘epidemic’ rise in the number of teenagers being diagnosed with poor mental health. In order to address this, we want to provide students and parents/carers with as much information as possible, practical strategies and knowledge of where to go for additional support.

School and normal family life may well have changed during the pandemic and problems may have emerged. The links on this page may help.  All families are different, and not everyone will need this guidance, but we hope the links on this page may prove helpful to some.

General Advice

The Parents’ Guide To is a website aimed at helping parents and carers to support their teenage children to create successful futures.  They produce many different “Guides To” and whilst this particular guide was published at the start of the first lockdown in March 2020, much of it is still relevant and may help – The Parents’ Guide To Coping with School Closures.

City of York Council has shared with us a Support for Families document which is full of information, web links and contact details for families in need of support on a number of topics including: housing, finance, food, SEN, mental health and bereavement amongst others.

Family Lives is an organisation which tries to help families build better lives. They offer online forums and a confidential helpline for emotional support, information, advice and guidance on any aspect of parenting and family life 0808 800 2222 E: askus@familylives.org.uk

Anger or Violence

The team at Family Matters York regularly offer online and face-to-face courses on Handling Anger in the Family. It will look at how as adults we manage our own anger and then how we support our children’s feelings of anger. It will involve the presentation of material, whole group discussions and small group activities which will all take place online at the same time, on the same day over four weeks.

Anyone who is interested is asked to contact Family Matters. They can be contacted on T: 07393 147259 or E: info@fmy.org.uk

If you are affected by sexual violence, you can get advice from Survive, a York-based charity providing support to victims of sexual abuse and assault.  Home – Survive

Keeping children and young people safe online

As students are spending more time than ever online, often on their own, it is especially important for parents and carers to be aware of what their children are being asked to do online, including the sites they are being asked to access. At Millthorpe, we have made all of this online learning information fully accessible on Google Classroom.

However, it is very likely that students will be visiting other online sites for fun and out of curiosity, so we want to provide as much signposting to practical and useful information as we can to help you keep your children safe whilst they are online.

ThinkUKnow is a website from the National Crime Agency’s Child Exploitation (CEOP) and Online Protection unit aimed at helping children, parents and those who work with children get better educated about online child abuse.  Try out their parents’ section.

Internet matters – aims to support parents and carers to keep their children safe online. Internet Matters have also produced these excellent fact sheets on online safety tips for parents of teenagers:

• Online safety tips for parents 11-13 year olds
• Online safety tips for parents of teenagers aged 14+

PACE (Parents against child exploitation) is charity working to inform parents and professionals about how to keep their children safe.  They have a website with a dedicated parents section.

An online incident affecting a child

If you think there has been an online incident affecting your child and you wish to speak to a member of the Pastoral Team, please click here for contact details. Alternatively, you can contact our Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead Sophie Johnson E: s.johnson@millthorpe.southbank.academy

Alternatively, you can report an incident directly to CEOP who are a national police agency.

Mental health and wellbeing

If you need immediate support, you can text SHOUT to 85258 and chat by text. The service is free on most networks and available 24/7, and trained volunteers will listen to you, and work with to help you take the next steps towards feeling better.

Kooth.com provides online mental health services for children, young people and adults. It is an online counselling and emotional well-being platform for children and young people, accessible through mobile, tablet and desktop and is completely free. Please take a look if you need support with your own mental health and wellbeing or if you need some guidance on how best to help someone else.

Recovery College is a useful online resource with general advice, support, and strategies for a wide range of mental health and wellbeing issues.

York Mind operates a Young People Project for young people aged between 11-21 years old. 

CAMHS has published ideas for supporting pupils with emotional and mental health difficulties on their website – you can view these here.

Child Bereavement UK also has online information on supporting pupils with issues surrounding bereavement.