Children’s Mental Health Week gets under way at Surrey Square

As hundreds of schools - and thousands of children around the UK - embrace Children’s Mental Health Week, we took a trip to one London primary school with Place2Be’s Clinical Director to see how they were starting the week. 

With the support of The Walt Disney Company and the Here4You campaign, six black cabs themed for Children's Mental Health Week made a special journey to Surrey Square in South East London.

Whilst there, Place2Be's Clinical Director, Rebecca Kirkbride, hand-delivered official Children's Mental Health Week resources and spent time with four inspiring young people. She also heard from Head Teacher Matt Morden about how the school supports pupil wellbeing and why they value the campaign week.

Arriving at playtime, the taxi parade created a tremendous buzz and excitement in the playground. The children were eager to interact and share which of the emotions from Disney and Pixar’s Inside Out 2 film they most identified with – and which characters were their favourites.

Having supplied some of the Children’s Mental Health Week packs, Rebecca then sat down with a group of pupils to get stuck into doing some of the activity pages together.

The school children were keen to explore this year’s campaign theme 'Know Yourself, Grow Yourself' and think about what mental health means to them.

She continued: “Sometimes if your mental health is good, you can be happy or hug people or smile, but if your mental health isn’t as good, you could be angry or not as happy with each other.”  

Another pupil wisely reflected, “It’s important to take care of your mental health [and] know how to control [it] because sometimes you can take it out on people.”

On welcoming these special visitors to school on Monday morning and showcasing his brilliant school community, Head Teacher Matt told us: “We’re really excited to help with the launch of Children’s Mental Health Week. It’s such an important platform to emphasise this work.”

Watch this short video capturing the morning’s visit and campaign week launch.

About Place2Be and Surrey Square Primary School

Surrey Square is one of over 700 schools working in direct partnership with Place2Be (the organisation behind the campaign and the leading children and young people's mental health charity), all year round.

Place2Be’s tailored mental health support is available in primary, secondary, high and all-through schools across England, Scotland and Wales.