Thursday 10th October is World Mental Health Day. This is a great day for us to show our support for better mental health and start looking after our own wellbeing. This year's theme, set by the World Federation for Mental Health, is suicide prevention. We have several activities planned for students this week, including tutor time discussions, a kindness activity, mindfulness colouring in at lunchtime and #helloyellow. For this, we are asking all students to wear a small yellow accessory on Thursday and bring 50p to donate to Young Minds.

We are very excited and pleased to be able to share with you our involvement in the Trailblazer programme which begins in January. All students will be made aware of this in due course. Below is a joint statement from Ribston and the Trailblazer Team.

Trailblazer Programme Mental Health Support Teams in Schools 
  
We are delighted that our school has been given the opportunity to take part in a new, national programme to help make mental health support for children and young people more available when they need it. 
 
We are one of 72 schools from Cheltenham, Gloucester and the Forest of Dean to work with the NHS in Gloucestershire to introduce Mental Health Support Teams into schools.  
 
We hope that these teams will provide valuable support to our pupils to help them with life’s ups and down, for example, with issues such as anxiety, friendship concerns, exam stress and challenging behaviour. 
 
This may involve group work and/or individual, one-to-one support, either at school or elsewhere. Where appropriate, the Mental Health Support Team will also link up with the specialist mental health services in Gloucestershire. They will also support parents and teachers to help children and young people who are experiencing difficulties.
 
If you have any questions or concerns or would like to make a referral to the service, please contact Carolyn Ford.