1 HeadStart Kent News March 2019 Jess Speaks at Parliament On Tuesday, February 5, four young people, from Folkestone, Ashford and Canterbury Academy, attended a Parliamentary event on the mental health of young people organised by The National Lottery Community Fund for HeadStart partnerships. Jess Griffiths, 19, from Folkestone, who is a Young Carer and has been involved in the HeadStart Kent programme since 2016, spoke about her own experiences, emphasising the importance of co- production and ensuring young people have a say in how services are developed locally. During her speech she said: “If someone had said to me two years ago that I would be standing up here in front of this many people – speaking – I would have run a mile! When I got involved in HeadStart I was struggling at school. I didn’t have very good attendance, or a great relationship with my teachers, and was always told I was never going to achieve anything in my life. “I have helped massively to develop HeadStart and, in turn, HeadStart has played a massive role in creating an environment which has helped me develop and get to where I am today. I really look forward to what the future holds and how I can continue to use and build on the skills and confidence I have developed through my journey with HeadStart Kent. ” Speaking after the event Jess, who won a British Youth Council award for personal development in the Youth Voice Star Awards in January 2019, said: “It was brilliant being able to share my experiences of HeadStart Kent with so many people and having MPs and other decision makers there to hear. I hope it will have a positive impact and improve awareness of what HeadStart is doing with young people.” The event, hosted by the Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, aimed to help the partnerships highlight their current learning, and support both the sustainability of HeadStart partnerships and the legacy of the programme and its evaluation through engaging a variety of stakeholders. From Left to Right…Young Person from Blackpool, Mims Davies MP, Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, Dawn Austwick National Lottery Community Fund and Jess Griffiths Eleanor Burnaby–Rouse and Jess Griffiths
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HeadStart Kent News March 2019...a Parliamentary event on the mental health of young people organised by The National Lottery Community Fund for HeadStart partnerships. Jess Griffiths,
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HeadStart Kent News March 2019
Jess Speaks at Parliament
On Tuesday, February 5, four young people, from
Folkestone, Ashford and Canterbury Academy, attended
a Parliamentary event on the mental health of young
people organised by The National Lottery Community
Fund for HeadStart partnerships.
Jess Griffiths, 19, from Folkestone, who is a Young
Carer and has been involved in the HeadStart Kent
programme since 2016, spoke about her own
experiences, emphasising the importance of co-
production and ensuring young people have a say in
how services are developed locally.
During her speech she said: “If someone had said to me two
years ago that I would be standing up here in front of this many
people – speaking – I would have run a mile! When I got
involved in HeadStart I was struggling at school. I didn’t have
very good attendance, or a great relationship with my teachers,
and was always told I was never going to achieve anything in
my life.
“I have helped massively to develop HeadStart and, in turn,
HeadStart has played a massive role in creating an environment
which has helped me develop and get to where I am today. I
really look forward to what the future holds and how I can
continue to use and build on the skills and confidence I have
developed through my journey with HeadStart Kent.”
Speaking after the event Jess, who won a
British Youth Council award for personal
development in the Youth Voice Star Awards
in January 2019, said: “It was brilliant being
able to share my experiences of HeadStart
Kent with so many people and having MPs
and other decision makers there to hear. I
hope it will have a positive impact and improve
awareness of what HeadStart is doing with
young people.” The event, hosted by the Rt
Hon Norman Lamb MP, aimed to help the
partnerships highlight their current learning,
and support both the sustainability of
HeadStart partnerships and the legacy of the
programme and its evaluation through
engaging a variety of stakeholders.
From Left to Right…Young Person from Blackpool, Mims Davies
MP, Rt Hon Norman Lamb MP, Dawn Austwick National Lottery
Community Fund and Jess Griffiths
Eleanor Burnaby–Rouse and Jess Griffiths
2
Kent Youth Take a Leap of Faith
Speakout @HeadStart Kent and Kent Youth County Council members attended a weekend
residential at the Kingswood Centre, Ashford as part of their training and induction to their new
roles.
Over the weekend the young people took part in a number of outdoor activities including Lazer
quest, problem solving games and a leap of faith! There were also a range of workshops to
develop their understanding of being elected representatives and
decision makers within HeadStart Kent. Learning included
developing skills in chairing meetings, managing exam stress and
10 young people were trained as Democracy Young
Ambassadors.
Young people told us the best bits about the weekend were
‘making new friends’, ‘stepping out of my comfort zone’ and
‘learning how to work with new people’.
Evaluating our Progress
A summary report with findings from the second year of school implementation interviews is now
available via the Research and Evaluation page. The full report is available on request from
Making best use of the Wellbeing Measurement Framework (WMF) survey
findings
A member of the Resilience Team from St. Georges Secondary School in Thanet has
demonstrated a fantastic example of best practice, by showing how the data collated through the
annual WMF survey can be interpreted and used to support future planning in schools.
He tells us he attended the training workshop offered by HeadStart and CORC at the end of
2018 after the online reports were issued, which looked at explaining the WMF data in depth and
how to use findings for different audiences. He then took the time to analyse his school’s data
more thoroughly. He states, “It was very useful as it threw up a couple of surprising/intriguing
findings… but gave us meaningful evidence to use.”
The findings were discussed with the school’s Resilience Team and has led to the focus on
some specific actions in relation to areas they felt they needed to improve, but also to ensure
that they look at creating some definite targeted interventions. They are now reviewing the
school’s PSHE mapping and were able to link together what they are doing as part of the
HeadStart Kent programme with some clear, measurable outcomes.
The next steps are to share the findings with the school’s senior leadership team (SLT) and
Governing Board, and also staff in each year group, for them to inform the pupils. The aim is to
run some focus groups with young people to be able to understand their feelings and needs.
This is a really impressive example of what we hope the results of WMF survey can bring to your
schools, and how you can take this knowledge forward to focus on areas of wellbeing and
resilience that you may wish to improve. Well done St. Georges!
Youth Take Over Day
On Tuesday 19th February we took part in the youth take over day challenge with HeadStart Kent. In the morning we looked at the Talents and Interest grant applications and either granted them the money or asked them for more information.
We also worked on developing the community resilience tool kit, which was actually pretty difficult and probably needs more work.
After lunch we had our first Executive group where we got to look at some data and put forward questions regarding Kooth and safe spaces to the people in charge and had them answered to see what work was being done to correct problems we saw.
Written by Megan P - Canterbury and Central SpeakOut
Reading Well
Kent libraries is involved in a national scheme called Reading Well Books on Prescription, which
makes books and a reading list available on different subjects, including mental health for 13 –
18 year olds. For more information visit the Reading Well website.