Conference: Mental Health Awareness: Children and Young People
Thu, 23 Mar 2017 13:36:00 GMT
This year’s Undergraduate Framework Conference hosted by the School of Education and Professional Development explored the wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. This year’s keynote speaker was PAPYRUS HOPELineUK Manager Heather Dickinson. The lecture entitled ‘Prevention of Suicide’ presented some background statistics relating to young suicide and outlined the scale of the problem, Heather also highlighted the use of language, attitudes and other ways that perpetuate stigma.
The annual conference is aimed at second year students on our Early Years BA(Hons), Childhood Studies BA(Hons), Religion and Education BA(Hons) and Youth and Community BA(Hons) courses and is a unique part of the course design intended to bring students on all pathways together to explore contemporary issues impacting on their chosen subject areas and to prepare for the Major Study in year 3.
After the keynote lecture the students split off into workshops delivered by various external speakers and Post Graduate Researchers. One workshop delivered by keynote speaker Heather Dickinson got students up and moving, separating into different parts of the room to answer ‘Yes’ ‘No’ or ‘Maybe’ to a variety of questions including whether suicide is a selfish act and whether social media is brilliant, in order to get discussions flowing.
Other workshops included ‘Cyber Safe Generation: Children’s wellbeing online’, ‘It doesn’t get any better: the real impact of poor Literacy and Numeracy skills’ and ‘Mental Health and Wellbeing of Young People’ to name just a few. This gave students an opportunity to explore a number of important topics related to the wellbeing and mental health of children and young people. This knowledge and understanding can then be used in the remainder of their course and will benefit them out in the workplace even after graduation.
The afternoon concluded the event by focusing on getting the students ready for research, as second year students about to embark on their dissertation from September this was a great opportunity to find out from tutors what to expect.
