by Leighton Conridge, 12M

This week at school we celebrated Children’s Mental Health Week in order to help spread awareness of the issues that children face today. Alongside assemblies and form presentations on the topic, students were treated to a few activities that were held throughout the week.

Retune:

Retune (www.retunewellbeing.com) is a charity that focuses on helping to improve mental wellbeing through creative outlets such as music. They held a workshop in school on Tuesday that was open to Year 11 and 13 students who wished to sign up. The event was held by Tom Ryder and Greg Camburn, who are the founder and CEO of the charity respectively. Tom led the majority of the event with occasional interjections (and playing of a penny whistle) from Greg.
Various activities were taken part in throughout, primarily in the form of discussions but also through things such as coming up with lyrics for a song in real-time or making a song as a group at the end. 
Ideas were presented as well, such as the idea behind the name ‘Retune’ and the concept of SCALES. The name comes from the idea that similarly to how a discordant string in an instrument or a wrongly tuned radio/tv can make the whole thing sound awful, a similar concept can be applied to the mind wherein something discordant can affect wellbeing. The idea then is to be able to isolate that discordance and ‘retune’ it.
The concept of SCALES is an acronym that stands for a list of activities that hold up mental wellbeing, that being Sleep, Creativity, Action, Listening, Earth and Socialising. Sleep is important for mental wellbeing as having poor sleep can affect the brain detrimentally. Creativity is the idea of using outlets such as music or reading in order to calm oneself. Listening is not just listening to others but also to yourself, so as to understand when issues might be arising. Earth is nature or exercise; participating in either of the two is good for you and Socialising is important because humans are social creatures.
The talk was quite informative and the information provided was useful.

Bake Sale:

A bake sale was held in order to raise money for local charity Place2Be and to help buy supplies for the Year 7 and 8 ‘Chat n’ Chill’ club.  Although it was originally meant to be held on Tuesday, the date of the bake sale was moved to Thursday breaktime.  A variety of treats were on offer such as cookies and brownies – all the stuff you’d expect from a bake sale. It seemed to have been a success, so here’s to hoping the money is put to good use!

Pet Therapy:

Also on Thursday a ‘Pet Therapy’ event was held for selected students in Years 7 and 8 who were invited to meet Captain, Nutmeg, Winnie and Pumpkin, four Guinea pigs for cuddles and strokes from Lara's Ark! Nutmeg is a long-haired Peruvian Guinea pig while Captain, the only boy of the herd is a werewolf Guinea pig with more coarse and wiry.  Pumpkin, the baby, is a Teddy Guinea pig and Winnie is a hairless Skinny pig who felt amazingly warm to the touch!  It was amazing to see the students' faces as they held the animals and the calming effect that the pets created.  I think the photos say it all!

Interview with Mrs Ginders:

During the week, I was lucky enough to have a quick chat with our school counsellor, Ms Ginders, on the activities hosted throughout the week and issues children face today.  She said that at the moment, a lot of teenagers seem to be struggling with poor sleep schedules which could be linked to screen time issues and a lack of self-esteem, which is likely to stem from social media. It seems that social media can be a real problem, but what to do? Australia has banned social media for usage of those under 16, but is this the right move…?
On a more positive note, Mrs Ginders said that she was going to review the activities that had taken place and any that were particularly successful could potentially be done again throughout the school year or as part of the next Children’s Mental Health week. As someone who went to a number of the activities, this seems like a good idea!

All in all, the week was useful in raising awareness and raising money via the bake sale. Thanks for reading!