Bella Rubens and Dr Jennifer McGowan, Experimental Psychology Department, University College London
Worldwide, 10% to 20% of young people experience mental health problems(1,2). In England child and adolescent mental health risk has shown a consistent increase in emotional problems over the past 20 years(3). Whilst these figures are worrying, there is hope.
Resilience is a concept which seeks to explain how some individuals can achieve, maintain, or regain well-being in the face of hardship. School resilience has repeatedly been found to buffer against mental and physical distress in children and adolescents(4), as has school engagement. Engagement is a construct which covers students’ behaviours, feelings and thoughts relating to school. As schools are a near-universal service working with children during a critical developmental period and operating in collaboration with local authorities and wider communities, they are well-placed to implement resilience interventions.
The Anchor Approach
The Resilience Research Group is working with Haringey Council Public Health Team to evaluate one such intervention. The Anchor Approach is a whole-school resilience intervention which has been run in 28 primary schools, 2 secondary schools, 1 sixth-form college, 1 special school and 1 nursery.
Through training and resources, school staff learn strategies to the improve the resilience and wellbeing of their students by supporting emotion regulation using Emotion Coaching techniques and by identifying and meeting unmet universal needs using the resilience wheel model above using tools such as the resilience wheel (above), the emotionally friendly cards and the common language. The approach aims to encourage long-term behavioural change by supporting adults to improve adult – student relationships. Examples of behaviour change: reducing challenging behaviour; increasing concentration; and improving academic achievement.
Our Study
Our research aims are:
1) to explore how effective and sustainable school interventions like Anchor are, in terms of (a) how well they are accepted, (b) how well they work, (c) whether they can realistically be implemented and (d) how the structure can be further adapted to compliment the environment of individual schools.
2) to explore what parents and staff think about Anchor as a means to improve school engagement and other outcomes (for example, behavioural and emotional).
We are using small focus groups from February-April 2022 with five different participant groups: parents, classroom teachers, teaching assistants, senior leadership team members and special educational needs co-ordinators. We want to speak to these people because they are all stakeholders in education. Not only are they likely to have opinions about the Anchor Approach, they are central to the success of this intervention and others.
Participants from any of the ‘staff’ focus group categories will be asked questions about Anchor in practice, in relation to the aims of the research. Questions include:
What was your overall experience of the Anchor Approach?
What has been the impact of the Anchor Approach on pupils?
Parents or guardians may have comparatively less explicit knowledge regarding Anchor. Questions include:
Are you aware of the Anchor Approach?
What do you think of the Anchor Approach?
In our next update we will reveal more about the focus groups and the importance of ethics in psychological research – stay tuned!
References
1. Dray J, Bowman J, Campbell E, et al. Systematic review of universal resilience-focused interventions targeting child and adolescent mental health in the school setting. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 2017;56:813-824.
2. Kieling C, Baker-Henningham H, Belfer M, et al. Child and adolescent mental health worldwide: evidence for action. The Lancet. 2011;378:1515-1525.
3. Collishaw S, Maughan B, Natarajan L, Pickles A. Trends in adolescent emotional problems in England: a comparison of two national cohorts twenty years apart. Journal of child psychology and psychiatry. 2010;51:885-894.
4. Wagnild G, Young HM. Resilience among older women. The Journal of Nursing Scholarship. 1990;22:252-255.
5. Allen M. Local action on health inequalities: building children and young people’s resilience in schools. London: Public Health England, UCL Institute of Health Equity;2014.
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