How to talk about and support young people with their wellbeing

The Children’s Society has developed this comprehensive yet simple guidance on how to best support young people’s wellbeing. Based upon research young people, this resource seeks to outline:

• what wellbeing means to young people
• how adults can have better conversations with them about wellbeing
• how adults can best support young people’s wellbeing.

The guidance includes a definition of wellbeing and explains how it is understood by young people. It provides advice on how adults can respond to young people in the most useful way, taking trust, time, tone and tense into consideration when entering conversations.

The guidance outlines 5 key steps that are built from children and young people’s experience to remember when approaching these conversations:

• Actively listen
• Acknowledge
• Affirm
• Advise
• Act

Mental health leads can share this document with their colleagues to help upskill them and develop their confidence in supporting the wellbeing of young people.

Using this resource

This resource is designed for:

• use by mental health leads working with students aged 9 to 19+.

Learning outcomes

This resource addresses the following learning outcomes:

• Develop effective plans to empower and involve pupils and students, including those with additional needs and communication difficulties, in the co-production, and embedding, of their whole school or college approach.
• Identify opportunities for appropriate use of pupil or student peer-led wellbeing support.