Sherborne School in Dorset is paving the way with a new initiative which has been created by pupils at the school.
Pupils provided feedback that they felt listened to at school by the adults within its community. However, boys expressed a desire for peer level support: they wanted to have someone to turn to amongst their peer group, who would listen, support and provide a friendly shoulder to lean on.
Marie Hutchings, nurse manager and mental health lead for the school, collaborated with the school counsellor to create and deliver a training package whereby pupils could volunteer to be trained as “pupil listeners”.
The training teaches pupils that mental health is in essence a balance, we all swing between being in good or poor mental health depending on what is going on around us and how we cope with things.
The school has its own mental health prefect who contributed to the workshops which helped to inspire boys training to become pupil listeners. The listening service does not promise to cure poor mental health, but Marie hopes it may help change negative behaviours in school, make mental health more talked about and ultimately, it may give somebody who needs it extra support options.
Each pupil listener gave up two evenings for a 90 minute workshop, during which boys developed skills and carried out practice scenarios. Marie was particularly pleased with the way the boys took ownership of the project and said: “Their enthusiasm to learn and desire to develop their skills in order to help others was a joy to see.”
Since the pupil listener training took place in September, further steps have been taken and mental health committee meetings have been led by Sherborne’s mental health prefect, sixth former Will J.
Will has been working with boys on how to launch and communicate the service to other boys including by designing a poster and speaking in assemblies.
Marie is really pleased with the success of the service and attributes this to the enthusiasm with which the boys at Sherborne have seized the opportunity to make a difference to others.
Marie says: “In essence we are trying to provide a listening service, they boys do just that, they listen, they don’t judge.”
Next steps at Sherborne include bringing the service to life, supervision sessions from the school counsellor will be implemented to support the listeners develop their listening skills even further.