At the HealthPathways Conference in Brisbane in May, delegates presented on a broad range of topics. Streamliners team members Sarah Bichan, Stronger Schools Senior Technical Writer and Mark Girvan, UK Director of Operations, shared their insights about how Stronger Schools helps teachers and school staff to support children’s health and well-being.
Stronger Schools is an online resource that gives teachers and school staff tools to recognise children’s well-being needs, so that they can provide support and know when to seek help.
In line with HealthPathways, Stronger Schools has a mission to improve the health and well-being of children around the world. It does this by encouraging early intervention to support children’s health and well-being and facilitate better-informed decisions.
Stronger Schools was developed in New Zealand, following the Canterbury earthquakes (2010 and 2011) and the Christchurch Mosque Attacks (2019) which had a huge impact on children in terms of mental health and well-being.
Sarah Bichan is Stronger Schools’ Senior Technical Writer. She explains, “Stronger Schools was born out of a need for trauma-informed care in the classroom, enabling early intervention, recognition, and support for the children who need it.”
The New Zealand site is known as Kete Tautoko Tamariki. This reo Māori name was given to Stronger Schools by a local translator and means “A basket of support for children”. Stronger Schools was introduced in South Tyneside in the United Kingdom in 2018.
Stronger Schools has a number of pathways that focus on physical health, mental and emotional well-being, and learning and development in children. Each site also has support pages which help teachers know which services are appropriate to contact for advice and when they should make a referral.
Mark Girvan says South Tyneside was an early adopter of Stronger Schools in the UK. “The idea is to provide educators with what they need to recognise well-being needs, to support the identification of those needs, and then to give them the tools to support the individual, the class, and the family. It could be anxiety, bullying, self-harm, as well as health, developmental and learning needs.”
Mark says, like any pathway, collaboration is key. “The pathways are jointly developed through local experts and local educators coming together to say this is how we do things around here.”
“We write in plain language and take a strengths-based approach, so that teachers can focus on strengths instead of deficits,” adds Sarah.
Sarah says the information is centred around the needs of individual children, but the benefits extend to the whole class. “So you might look at a pathway because you suspect a child has a certain condition or is displaying certain behaviours, and decide to implement a strategy. The pathways have been designed to ensure that the strategies are valuable for all children, whether or not they have a diagnosis or a wellbeing concern. It’s going to be something that benefits everybody. It encourages a caring and inclusive classroom.”
One example is a page on nurturing well-being in the classroom, which looks at social and emotional learning and inclusivity. Like all Stronger Schools pages, it was developed collaboratively between education professionals, support agencies, GPs, and hospital clinicians.
In New Zealand, Stronger Schools was designed to reflect the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi – “partnership, participation, and protection of mana”. This is done by asking teachers to engage with families and by valuing families’ role and knowledge. This reflects Te ao Māori values that recognise the importance of genealogy and relationships in promoting holistic well-being.
“It's not just about what the teacher says or what the pathway says. We respect the language, identity, and culture of children and their families. Everybody works together to support the child to feel safe, valued, and connected so that they can contribute and are learning. All of that builds positive foundations for well-being,” says Sarah.
The aim is inclusive, caring, positive classrooms. “When children have unmet needs or they've experienced trauma, it has a long-term impact on their health and well-being. For some kids, school is the only place that they can feel safe and valued.”
The pathways encourage teachers to intervene with a light touch before a challenge becomes a problem or a habit.
Stronger Schools is evidence-based. “It's reviewed by specialists in education and health. That means teachers are secure in the knowledge that they're making an informed decision,” says Sarah.
“Having all of that information there means that everybody gets the right support at the right time – teachers, families, and children,” Sarah says.
Elaine Simpson is a teacher in South Tyneside in the UK. “I think the Stronger Schools website is an absolutely invaluable resource for professionals working with children and families. It covers a wide range of ways that you can support children or concerns that you might have about a child – all the way from head lice to the signs and symptoms and ways that you can support young people who have ADHD or even if somebody has disclosed that they’re self-harming or that they might have suicidal ideation.”
Elaine particularly likes how the website's broken down into different pathways. “So if you've got a concern around a young person or if you've noticed that they’re experiencing a difficulty, you can go to that section of the Stronger Schools website and it will give you some direction and guidance on what you can do. For example, it will give you some signs and symptoms of those difficulties that you look out for, how you record those difficulties and whom you speak to within your service or your school about those difficulties. It’ll also give you some guidance on when and who is responsible for contacting parents about that difficulty and also the agencies within South Tyneside that are there to support families and children.”
Elaine sees wider benefits of Stronger Schools for working with young people and families. “There is content in the website that can be lifted and put into support plans. So there is a sense of cohesion, and if you go into a multi-agency meeting, everybody around the table is going to be singing from the same hymn sheet.”
New Zealand Child Psychologist Faith Fauchelle describes Stronger Schools as “practical, up-to-date, evidence-informed information from a wide range of sources.”
“This wealth of resources really empowers school staff to consider appropriate pathways of support and responses that are graduated and tailored to the specific needs of individuals,” she says.
New Zealand Consultant Psychologist Ursula McCulloch has helped develop pathways for Stronger Schools in Canterbury. “I’ve really enjoyed being part of this project. I've been really impressed with the content gathered from a variety of experts working in the field of child mental health and I really like how it's been put together in an accessible way. We've worked hard to ensure that it's evidence-based and relevant to the schools that we're working with. We’re always updating the site and the content based on the questions raised by schools.”
The hundreds of pathways created in Canterbury and South Tyneside provide a solid foundation for other systems to pick up and adapt.
“The content is consistent and evidence-based. Only the services are localised,” Sarah explains. “The impact of Stronger Schools on well-being extends beyond children and families and into the wider health system. It can reduce variation to make sure everyone supporting young people is using the same evidence-based foundation. It also helps to map all the local and national services – from education to health and social services – which can inform what government agencies need to invest in for the future.”
Find out more
If you’d like to know more about Stronger Schools, or if your school or service hasn’t yet joined the Stronger Schools Community, please: