Guidance

Promoting children and young people's mental health and wellbeing

Guidance on the 8 principles of a whole school or college approach to promoting mental health and wellbeing.

Documents

Details

This document describes 8 principles of a whole school or college approach to promoting mental health and wellbeing, which, if applied consistently and comprehensively, will help contribute towards protecting and promoting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

Each principle is considered together with some examples from practice and a question to help the reader to reflect on the implications for practice in their own setting. The document also signposts to resources to support implementation.

This document will be useful to anyone responsible for promoting and supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in schools and colleges, including:

  • headteachers
  • principals and their senior leadership teams
  • school and college governing bodies
  • senior mental health leads
  • special educational needs (SEN) and pastoral leads
  • school nurses
  • educational psychologists
  • local public health teams

Updates to this page

Published 20 March 2015
Last updated 16 November 2023 + show all updates
  1. Retagged as belonging to OHID (rather than PHE).

  2. Updated document, now published as a joint PHE, DfE and Children and Young People's Mental Health Coalition publication.

  3. Updated 'Promoting children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing'.

  4. First published.

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