Schools across Liverpool are invited to apply for public health funding to support the mental health and wellbeing of their students.
The pandemic impacted us all, and especially our children and young people – so to help understand how they’ve been affected, Liverpool City Council, in collaboration with local health and education partners, and the University of Oxford launched the ‘OxWell survey’.
Reaching out and listening to our residents is a key part of Liverpool City Council’s improvement journey, and as part of this anonymous survey, we heard from over 12,000 children and young people.
We asked them questions about their emotional health and wellbeing and they told us about different aspects of their lives, such as eating and sleeping habits, their physical activity, mental health and experiences of lockdown.
In response to these findings, public health is now funding a schools grants programme to fund a number of initiatives. Schools are invited to apply for funding to support activity that will address positive change and improve the emotional health and wellbeing of their pupils.
Applications are now open for grants of £5,000 or collaborative school grants of £15,000 to develop projects that demonstrate positive change within schools to address their locally identified needs.
Successful projects will demonstrate how they meet specific objectives and that they can track change.
Schools who were unable to complete the survey due to pressures of Covid-19 are still able to apply if they can evidence a specific need within their school which relates to the key findings.
Grants will be approved over the summer break, with funding released to schools in September ready for the new academic year.
Cabinet Member for Education and Skills, Cllr Tomas Logan said “One of the top priorities for our children and young people is to ensure their mental health and emotional wellbeing is being supported.
Alongside the grant for schools, Liverpool City Council is investing in different models to improve the mental health and wellbeing of our youngest residents. This will include targeted programmes, research pilots and enrichment activities. Our hope is that we will be able to scale up projects where we see demonstrable success – sharing resources and good practice across the city.”
Director of Public Health for Liverpool, Professor Matthew Ashton said “Mental health has been a major concern for everyone during the pandemic – especially the impact it’s had on our children and young people. This grant is part of a £5m investment into extending support and interventions for emotional health and wellbeing for families, children and young people.
The findings of the OxWell survey now means many schools have baseline information that allows them to better understand the needs of their children, and by using this, they can develop bespoke projects to address issues identified within their school.”
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