 How can you write an effective mental health policy for your school or college? Okay, I will link in the description to a sample policy that you can adapt for use in your school or college by following some of the Guidance that I will give you in this video. However, before we have a look at how and why and whatever I want you to think about why do you want to develop a school policy for mental health? What's your purpose here? What are you hoping it will achieve unless you really clearly understand the answer to that question? It's going to be really difficult to write an effective policy that works for you in your school or college. So how do I think about why you're doing it and do you actually need one? Because sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes this is covered off really well elsewhere and there's no point having a policy just in order to tick a box. So if you think about it and you realize, yes, I really do want a policy because of X, Y, Z fantastic. Watch on. Otherwise, good luck. So you've decided that you do need a mental health policy and you want to know how to make sure it's as effective and useful as it can be. So my first tip is to keep it really simple and very practical. So think about how somebody reading this policy will be able to act as a result of what they've read in this policy. So it shouldn't just be a really dry, kind of wordy theoretical document. It should be very, very clear about things like referral procedures, about things like warning signs, about who to talk to, what the processes are, all this kind of thing. So really, really simple, straightforward stuff that you want to communicate with with all staff and your school community. So, yeah, keep it simple. Number two is when you're developing your policy, try to learn from your past experiences and where possible. See if you can draw on your students, staff and parent voices to have a think about what they would want from this kind of policy. What do they have concerns about? What do they need to know answers to? You need to think about who would be accessing this policy and what their questions might be when accessing it and try to address those in the policy itself. So, for example, a parent might want to know what would happen with information about their child if they shared information with the school. A pupil might want to know who's going to be told if I open up to a member of staff that I'm self-harming, for example. And other staff might want to know, oh, what's the process if I'm concerned that a child might be developing a mental health issue? Who should I be talking to and what are the next steps? So, have a think about the common issues that are going to be coming up for different people who might use the policy and try and address those head on. Number three is make sure you have really clear calls to action throughout your policy. So, again, people accessing it know what to do. OK, so the key thing here is that somebody has a concern of some kind, they access the policy, it needs to tell them what to do. Really, really clearly, the who, what, why, when, where, how, how, what, all the questions, basically. Next steps, what are the next steps for the person accessing this policy? It's got to be really, really clear. Number five, think about how you're going to disseminate your policy. So, you can write the best policy in the world that is really, really effective, but it's actually going to be completely ineffective if nobody uses it. So, have a think about how you're going to communicate the fact that you have the policy and also the content of the policy, too. If it's a good policy, there will be content in there worth sharing. So, is it going to be a staff meeting? Are you going to put it on your website? Are you going to share it in a parent's evening? Are you going to write a student friendly version and have that shared via the student council or form time? There's so many different ways that you can do this, but have a think about how are you going to share the policy and the contents of the policy. Also, think about how you're going to use feedback over time to actually update and revise that policy. So, rather than just doing an automatic update when you get to the end of three years or whatever your policy cycle is, have a think about this as a more evolving document that can be changed and altered over time as you learn about what works well. So, the best policies are kind of living, breathing documents that reflect best practice as we know it right now. They reflect things that we've learned, things that haven't worked, things that have, and they grow and change to encompass what we learn. And then finally, I think it's really important that within your policy, you very, very clearly show the names of the members of staff who have specific roles related to this. It's really important that anyone who's got concerns know who the relevant governor or staff members are to take those concerns to. If they want to know more about something, if they have a concern that needs to be passed on, who are the key members of staff here and how do you reach them? Make sure that's included in your policy too. Some people feel that that's not a great idea because actually those members of staff might change. But in my opinion, you need to have those members of staff in that document. And if the staff change, you need to update the document. I think it's really, really important. Otherwise, you might find that someone accessing the document just doesn't know who to go to with their concerns. It might be that a parent has concerns, they read the document and it tells them quite clearly what the processes are, but they don't know who the staff responsible are. And Ditto, even within your staff body, it's very possible that you'll have members of staff who don't quite know who to go to with these concerns. We're often really, really good at naming our designated leads for child protection, for example, and safeguarding, but often less good at doing that for mental health and well-being. That is changing, but this is a really good opportunity for you to make it very, very clear who is responsible, who should we talk to and how do we access them if we have concerns. So hopefully some helpful pointers there. And the key thing here is that this does not have to be a perfect document. It needs to be something practical and usable that makes sense within your school or college community. So don't worry about getting it perfect before you share it. Actually, think about this as something that is going to be responsive to the needs of your community, your environment, and be prepared to go back and change it if things change. Good luck.