Kooth and Children’s Mental Health Week
Kooth’s vision is that everyone has access to mental health support when they need it. We know that when we raise awareness of our service and offer early help, we can prevent struggles from becoming more acute. Put bluntly, we can stop so many people having to wait for support or going to A&E for emergency help: we can help them today.
Our work to raise awareness during Children’s Mental Health Week is predicated on our knowledge that when we help individuals to understand and manage their mental health it positively impacts them and their communities, making a huge and vital contribution to population-wide mental health.
Here are some highlights from a week of awareness raising and support:
We collaborated with Muslim students in Birmingham
We collaborated with Muslim students at a boy’s school in Birmingham, hosting a workshop on ‘why my voice matters’.
We then supported them in making a powerful film on the topic, which we shared on social media.
A boy from Handsworth Grammar School exploring the theme of Your Voice Matters
The film was viewed over 27,000 times over the week, earning well over 500 likes on social channels.
We reached 47,000+ students through school assemblies
We were fully booked across the week with local visits to schools and colleges.
We ran more than 230 assemblies across UK schools over the week, reaching over 47,000 children and young people and more than 3,000 teachers.
We hosted live school and college webinars reaching 20k+ students
We hosted six live webinars, accessed by more than 200 schools and colleges and reaching an estimated 20,000 students.
We continue our annual partnership with Now and Beyond as part of its annual mental health festival. The organisation has promoted Kooth assemblies, leading to an additional 15 sessions being booked, reaching hundreds of students.
We created a filmed podcast with a young person counsellor
We interviewed a counsellor who shared tips and insights to help young people have their voice heard. The video clips were shared on social media, with the full version available to service users on Kooth.
Click to watch Aisha Gordon-Hiles' brilliant podcast on how young people can effectively use their voice.
The clips have been viewed over 11,000 times across the week.
We created therapeutic content for Kooth
We published articles to the Kooth platform exploring the theme. One writer shared her experiences and tips having grown up with a stammer. Another article, written by a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, charted their experiences growing up with a disability and using their voice to be truly heard.
These valuable resources are available on Kooth and were shared on our social channels too.
We reached out to over 30,000 referrers
We shared newsletters with 15,600 teaching staff and with 25,400 healthcare and local organisation professionals outlining our campaign plans.
The newsletters linked to newly designed social assets and posters available for download and sharing via our updated ‘supporting schools’ resource hub.
Early help and advice via social media
Social media is an excellent channel to reach children and young people who may not otherwise ask for help. Content shared is designed to validate difficult feelings, to be informative and entertaining and to provide useful tips. It is created by young people, influencers and experts - and reviewed to ensure it meets our clinical guidelines.
Our activity on TikTok and Instagram
generated over 200,000 impressions
reached over 100,000 young people
earned over 900 likes
The social posts led to a significant number of positive comments, such as:
"What a great set of kids this is brilliant"
"Great to see young lads speaking up about this subject 🙌"
"Well done guys. This is amazing 🤩."
All of the content we created for this campaign is accessible through this microsite: https://explore.kooth.com/your-voice-matters/
For more information on our campaign, please email [email protected]