Who is the course for and what’s it about?

Much like ROAR Primary, this course is aimed at any staff member that works in a secondary school setting.

Like ROAR Primary, ROAR Secondary begins with an introduction to mental health and the ROAR response, which can be used alone as a whole school awareness session.

The course will then cover topics such as anxiety, low mood and depression, and suicide. Further topics discussed include parental mental health, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), social and emotional development, self-harm, eating disorders, adolescent brain development, and behaviour as a form of communication. These are the topics which are the most common issues our young people are facing, and ROAR aims to equip delegates to follow the ROAR response to children experiencing mental distress.

Each delegate will be provided with a comprehensive ROAR manual containing resources for working with young people in distress.

What difference will it make?

This course will support senior leadership teams in developing and implementing a whole-school approach to mental health. This will be with their own tailored policy, which will support staff, pupils, parents, and carers, following the eight principles of the whole-school approach to mental health. Senior leads will have the opportunity to develop their school’s wellbeing policy in line with these eight principles and implement this within their school.

With 1 in 5 young people having some form of diagnosable mental distress and greater demands since the pandemic, it can sometimes seem like an impossible task for the emotional needs of our young people to fall on a pastoral team or just one go-to person. That’s why our ROAR course will strengthen the senior leadership team to develop knowledge and resilience within their staff to respond to the mental health needs of their young people, their families and their own staff.