The delivery of Teen Mental Health First Aid training in the Upper Hunter will now be done by members of the community rather than staff in local schools.
While teachers will still get to be a part of the program that has become commonplace thanks to Where There’s A Will, this new way of delivering it to students will help build their support systems.
“Mel and I are both youth workers, so mental health for young people is a big part of our role as is ensuring that they maintain good mental health, so when Pauline approached both our workplaces and asked if we could be trained to be facilitators in the high schools Teen Mental Health First Aid, and we said yes, yes, we were keen,” Carlie Brown from Upper Hunter Community Services shared.
“It’s been an eye opener, but a good experience. I mean, I’ve worked within the school area for many years, so delivering this new program has been a good opportunity to reiterate to the kids how important it is to have the conversations around mental health and to change the stigma of mental health,” Mel Powell from Upper Hunter Youth Services added.
Teenagers are more likely to talk to their friends and peers than anyone else in their lives, so equipping them with the tools to know what to do when someone opens up to them can be lifesaving.
Hannah Miggins, a student support officer at Muswellbrook High School, said that this particular program is invaluable because of its focus on a peer support framework.
“We learn a lot about mental health in high school, especially here at Mussy High, but because it’s for them to help their mates, rather than it to be something to help myself, so that buy in is so much higher from our young people because they want to be there to help their friends,” she said.
“They might not necessarily pay attention to a lot of the mental health chatter that we do when it’s about taking care of ourselves, but they want to be there for their mates.”
Carlie and Mel are the first of the youth workers in the Upper Hunter, with two more set to be trained later this year, all thanks to ongoing passionate support from Bengalla Mining Company.
This partnership has been an ongoing one, with the local mining company fully invested in supporting a long term program that addresses an issue that the community identified.
“We knew this was something that we wanted to support and obviously was going to take some funds to be able to do that, but each year it was like, we’re working towards it, working towards it, and I was so darn excited when we had a meeting about the work that’s been done to get it into the schools,” Fiona Hartin, community relations specialist and PA to the general manager at Bengalla shared.
All five Upper Hunter high schools will be visited by the community trainers to share the teen mental health first aid training with their year 8 students.
