Childrens Mental Health Week

It is Childrens Mental Health Week this week and Mary, project leader for Groundbreakers tells us about how Groundbreakers addresses this most urgent of issues.

Never has there been a more important time to remind children that, however they are feeling, there are people they can talk to.

10% of children and young people (aged 5-16 years) have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem according to the Children's Society, yet 70% of children and adolescents who experience mental health problems have not had sufficient interventions at a sufficiently early age. The Covid crisis has only exacerbated this problem and as Groundbreakers staff, we have heard firsthand of the rise in anxiety and mood changes in children as young as 4 and 5. The Mental Health Foundation states that good mental health begins in Infancy and they have endorsed wholeheartedly the Scripture Union resource The Lost Sun which seeks to help children explore such issues as fear, worry and anxiety.

We took this interactive workshop to an Oldham school, to a class of 30 children aged 6 and 7 and we had a great afternoon making lighthouses and thinking about the fact that however dark our individual worlds get, Jesus is the Light of the World and he never goes out. We encouraged the children to take their lighthouses home and when they went to bed, to turn their lights on in the darkness and to remember that Jesus is with them... ALWAYS!

Incarnation | Compassion | Proclamation

Groundbreakers | Giving

#ChildrensMentalHeathWeek

https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk