TOTEM Mental Health Champions

As well as a dedicated team of staff to support our young people we also now have a dedicated team of Year 9, 10 and 11 students who are our Mental Health Champions. Their role is to provide support for younger students in school.

Almost 40 volunteers have completed a 2-day training course with Merseyside Youth Association and the Mental Health Support for Young People in Liverpool Team to become our champions. We will add to this each year by training new Year 9 students.

These Mental Health Champions wear yellow lanyards with ID badges, so they are easily recognisable to students in school. Part of their training included developing ideas for how they want peer mentoring to look in our school.

The Mental Health Champions will now implement the following initiatives throughout the academic year…

• Provide a safe “drop-in” space at lunch/break times
• Be someone else to ask for help/talk to if you are worried
• Attend appointments scheduled in school time to talk about issues (via our Learning Mentor referrals)
• Organise and take part in wellbeing walks and after-school clubs
• Provide help and support on transition days and open evenings
• Assemblies on mental health issues (including Children’s Mental Health Week)

Our current Year 9, 10 and 11 Mental Health Champions:

What is TOTEM?

TOTEM is a project designed and developed by young people for young people, ‘Talking Openly To Embrace Mental Health’ (TOTEM) gives them the skills to become confident peer mentors with a specific focus on mental health and emotional well-being. It empowers them to champion mental health and tackle stigma within their school or organisation.

Since last summer, over 35 volunteers from Years 9, 10 & 11 completed a 2-day peer mentor course focuses on mental health, specifically, it enables young people to recognise the signs and symptoms, understand what mental health is, build resilience and teach them how to have a conversation with someone who is struggling with their mental health.

What will we do?

All of us who completed the 2-day training course have now become a Mental Health Champion for our school. We will have on yellow lanyards with a badge to identify ourselves.

We plan to offer…

• A safe “drop-in” space at lunch/break times
• Someone else to ask for help/talk to if you are worried
• Appointments scheduled in school time to talk about issues (via our Learning Mentors)
• Wellbeing walks and after-school clubs
• Help on transition days and open evenings
• Assemblies on mental health issues