“The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.” – Richard Strauss
This week marks Children’s Mental Health Week 2024 and our Medical & Wellbeing team have encouraged both Junior and Senior students to embrace Place To Be’s theme for this year which is, ‘your voice matters.’
We each have a voice that matters and we each have a choice in how to express our voice, be that through spoken word, written work, art, music or even dance. Our voice can be found in the expression of our beliefs, values, feelings and the areas that matter to us. Some environments foster the confident expression of voice, whereas others inhibit our voices. Through a series of assemblies across the school, students were invited to reflect upon when they feel more confident to use their voice and which environments make it more difficult for them to use their voice.
In order for us to believe that our voice matters, we also need to feel heard. Therefore students were reminded of the importance of listening as an intrinsic aspect of ‘your voice matters’. To emphasise this, we were delighted to welcome Charlene and Rebecca from ‘The Lowdown’ on Monday lunchtime to launch Children’s Mental Health Week and engage with students, using their meaningful strapline, ‘know us before you need us’. ‘The Lowdown’ provide an extensive array of free, confidential mental health support services for 11-25 year olds in Northamptonshire, including counselling, wellbeing groups and information services. Students got involved by sharing positive habits that support their own mental health. Throughout the week students have also enjoyed sharing what matters to them by creating a wellbeing wall of hearts.
Mental health is not just a priority for this week, but is at the heart of our wellbeing focus throughout the school on a daily basis. Through our wellbeing spaces in both Junior and Senior School, our PSHE programme and weekly wellbeing offerings, including the popular wellbeing walks with Miss Hopley each Wednesday amongst many others, we hope that all students will feel that their voice matters and there will always be space for them to feel heard.
Wellbeing resources for families can be found here.
