Views & Opinion
A working partnership supporting children in lockdown Comment by Dr ASHA PATEL, CEO of education not-for-profit Innovating Minds
Over the last two years, Innovating Minds has been working with educational video producers ClickView. We are delighted that #WatchYourWellbeing has now been launched to spotlight students' mental health in lockdown. Innovating Minds is an
award-winning not for profit which works with staff and children in educational and community settings to develop early intervention approaches. We provide support to schools, charities and companies. Through our online portal EduPod we now offer training and resources to build staff skills and implement a whole school approach to mental health. ClickView is a subscription platform with a mixture of free and licensed
educational videos. These cover just about every area of the curriculum for primary and secondary schools and increasingly the further education sector too. The company has been producing resources since 2003 and is used by over 4500 schools, colleges, and universities around the world.
Developing a partnership Innovating Minds and ClickView first met at an exhibition and quickly found common ground. At Innovating Minds, we were increasing our range of online resources for schools and local authorities. Up to that time, teachers had been accustomed to researching topics via books and websites and getting information primarily from text-based sources. However, we had noted a move to visual media. Schools wanted materials which collated a variety of sources or opinions that could stand solo as an impetus for staff training or be embedded as web links on VLEs. There was an added motive in that staff were progressively seeking out resources from home and wanted to access them on Smartphones, iPads and tablets. ClickView were the experts in short form digital content. They had a
great reputation for their online library of thousands of high quality videos. Teachers could find exactly the topics they needed, in a format that worked well in lessons. Just as importantly, they could be confident that children accessing them would be protected from online predators. The company was looking at the rising number of children and young people who were experiencing stress and they were keen to find resources to support this area. So, in January 2019 ClickView came to our offices in Birmingham to
film the first in a series of videos around the theme of managing anxiety. The early ones looked at dealing with exam stress and coping with the transition from primary to secondary school. We also worked together on a set of three videos for students and six
videos for primary and secondary teachers' CPD and for trainee teachers. These videos offered a strikingly different approach to mental health training. They used a mixture of animation and live action and featured circus performers whose acts were used as a metaphor for different forms of anxiety.
This series covered • Generalised Anxiety Disorder • Separation Anxiety
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• Phobias • Social Anxiety • Selective Mutism • Panic Disorder
Covid and stress in the home Lockdown has brought its own pressures and so we have launched the #WatchYourWellbeing campaign. This was in part a response to a warning issued by the Royal College of Psychiatrists which claimed that: 'School closures, cancelled exams, empty lecture halls and lockdown threatened a mental health crisis that could plague the current generation of children for years to come.' There was also a BBC report in January 2021 about Childline calling out
for more volunteers in Wales because of a rise in demand for mental health counselling. The report showed that between April and December 2020, there had been an increase of around 13% in counselling sessions delivered to young people in Wales who were experiencing anxiety, low mood, depression, loneliness and low self-esteem. We run Healing Together™ for children impacted by domestic abuse
and violence and knew that lockdown had brought additional strains for many families. We also knew that children's mental health services had been overwhelmed by requests for referrals and that many pastoral staff in schools were increasingly concerned about the increase in anxiety related difficulties.
Supporting children in lockdown Innovating Minds worked with ClickView to add to their resource library that would give families and teachers more confidence in discussing the difficulties with children. We wanted young people to realise that they were not alone and that they had people around them who understood their feelings and concerns.
• My Body and Brain Working Together looks at what happens in the brain when it responds to emotions such as anger or anxiety. Students learn that their brain contains three different areas – a thinking part, a feelings-memories part, and a safety-survival part. These videos provide strategies for them to calm their mind and body during intense times. There is a related video on breathing strategies to practise mindfulness
• Wellbeing covers confidence, relationships, healthy habits, resilience, motivation, identity and values. It has practical easy to follow tips to help young people to bounce back when faced with adversity
• Understanding Anxiety, including What is Anxiety, offers an introduction to this complex emotional state, with suggestions for useful strategies to deal with it when it strikes and resources for use at home
Hopefully, it will not be too long until pupils return to schools.
However, many of them will not be as resilient as they were a year ago. We hope that the resources we have developed with ClickView will make staff more confident when supporting children.
https://open.online.clickview.co.uk/libraries/series/34595427/miniclips-
my-body-and-brain-working-together?sort=productionyear
https://open.online.clickview.co.uk/libraries/series/27043161/miniclips-
wellbeing?sort=productionyear
https://open.online.clickview.co.uk/libraries/series/16286463/understan
ding-anxiety?sort=productionyear
https://open.online.clickview.co.uk/libraries/series/16286463/understan ding-anxiety/videos/16132648/what-is-anxiety-
March 2021
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