An early intervention project is underway in Salford (North West England) tomorrow and it’s a rather splendid example of how a City Council and a well-known community charity can come together to support the well-being of school children with mental health issues.

The workshop model called “Mindsteps” is an early intervention, school based series of workshops aimed at young people who have expressed a need for support or have been referred for low level mental health issues such as depression, anxiety by a school, youth worker, parent or social worker.

This course is specifically designed for those young people who are displaying negative behaviours which are often linked to low self-esteem and lack of resilience including anti-social behaviour, low level drug and alcohol use or are offending/ at risk of offending.

Schools often report that a significant majority of young people who are at the risk of underachieving face complex well-being issues, but fall below the threshold for CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. CAMHS are the NHS services that assesses and treat young people with emotional, behavioural or mental health difficulties).

The first of such workshops is being delivered tomorrow by the Groundwork MSSTT charity (Groundwork Manchester, Salford, Stockport, Tameside and Trafford Ltd.) as part of a wider project to address mental health issues with our young people.

A group of young people from inner-city Salford will be experiencing activities such as;

• Barefoot Walking
• Building Shelters
• Fire Making (with the mandatory hot chocolate & marshmallows of course!)
• Natural Paint Making
• Meditation

Through exploration, activity based, experiential learning and one to one/group discussion; young people will learn to identify triggers, factors and indicators of their own mental health & well-being needs, and indeed, that of their peers.  Areas covered include:

• Brain Chemicals – What they are and how they can affect your mood
• Maslow’s Hierarchy – What do you need to feel good?
• Attachment Assessment – To gain a basic understanding of the young persons attachment style in order to best respond to their individual needs.

Essentially, the activities in the workshops are designed to give young people the tools to deal with stressful situations themselves in with “achievement coaching” (based on a tried and tested Groundwork model)by a qualified/experienced youth worker and by positive experiences, using the outdoor environment as a therapeutic tool to improve their well-being.  

We’ve blogged in the past about the ‘Forest Schools’ concept, adopted by an ever-increasing number of Schools all over the UK. This could be the next step towards alleviating our young people from some of the mental health issues they may be facing, by using the natural environment and therapeutic outdoor activities to assist them with their understanding of their own well-being / challenges and the road to recovery.    

To Groundwork MSSTT and NHS Salford Health Innovation Fund (total fund of £250,000.00 available, for such projects – apply here), we salute you.  That’s one fabulous project. Forest school – amplified!

If any of our website viewers know of other groundbreaking new initiatives such as this one, please don’t hesitate to get in touch and let us know; we love to spread positive news about how we can best serve our school children. 

WHAT IS AN OUTDOOR MODULAR CLASSROOM?

It’s an extension to your existing school, but a stand-alone outdoor modular building which has more in common with the landscape and trees surrounding it than the traditional bricks and mortar building which your pupils may usually associate with the school classroom. You may be considering extending your current building or re-modelling an existing space but there are at least 10 REASONS why an outdoor modular classroom is better & more beneficial for your school.

1) It looks great

Let’s cut to the chase here. There are another 9 reasons to go so please don’t judge us for being quite so fickle from the outset but quite simply, many people find the rustic charm of a timber-framed modular building waaaaaay more attractive than a brick building or it’s contemporaries. Practicality doesn’t have to mean a compromise on beautiful aesthetics. With an outdoor modular classroom you have a beautiful piece of modular contemporary architecture, fashioned in the style of a log cabin or woodsmans shed. It’s outdoorsy. 

2) You’re, indoors, outdoors!

This requires little explanation, but let’s just say that anyone who doesn’t agree that children spending more time surrounded by nature is both necessary and beneficial is probably so disconnected from the natural world that there is little hope left for them.

3) It’s filled with natural light

Oh, the roof-light dome and the 360 degrees windows (if you so wish) wrapped around the building! That, can’t be achieved with any other type of building. Creativity, imagination and inspiration thrive in a light-filled, inspiring environment.

4) Children learn first hand what can be built and achieved from natural resources.

At last, a building which children can identify with! The natural world which we try so hard to teach them about can actually visibly benefit them – the lightly oiled exposed timbers in the roof and the rough-sawn British cladding wrapping around the exterior, this building has more of the intrinsic qualities of a boat than that of a typical classroom. Your pupils can see the knots and twists within the timber which forms their classroom, and they can relate to the twists and knarls of the trees surrounding them.

outdoor modular classroom

5) A celebration of unique shape

Now, who wouldn’t want to learn and teach in a big, round, warm hug all day?! The circular form of one particular timber-framed modular outdoor classroom we know of feels like a big embrace, it’s walls wrap around you in a way that no other building can. This type of construction is only possible due to the advances within timber-framed manufacturing processes.

6) Encouraging a passion for the natural world

Your students are the next generation. We’re living in the Anthropocene period, one of unprecedented devastation of the natural world. This isn’t a plea to sell a product, this is a genuine, visceral, heart-tugging longing and pleading to see children engaged and supported in wooden, natural, low-impact buildings which inspire a connection to each other and the natural world. It feels like we’re running out of time to turn our civilisation around. On a practical level, features such as the green, natural, sedum roofs have a number of environmental benefits as well as encouraging bees and insects.

7) Cost benefits

Have a chat with us about the cost of installing a modular outdoor classroom – we promise you that it’s much, much more affordable than a brick-built extension.

8) Energy Saving

Being a high-energy saving building, utilising a modular circular timber-framed classroom may save your overall energy costs. The circular footprint is the most energy efficient (less exterior surface area than a rectilinear building) and is a heavily insulated eco-building – the requirement for heating

9) Unique space for out of hours events

This building is a wonderful social space. Who wouldn’t want an iconic eco-building for use on fund-raising days, staff events, school awards ceremonies or to lease out to local yoga or adult-education groups?

10) Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility!

Ok, so, it really is the MOST flexible option for a school, this type of modular timber classroom can be installed like a giant piece of flat-pack furniture, in about 10 days! It can be leased and returned after 5-10 years, it can be re-located if you so wish and it can be installed in a remote woodland location and run off a generator.

Really, it’s super-flexible.

And this list is not exhaustive…….!

If you’re considering a modular building for your outdoor classroom you can’t possibly benefit your school more than utilising a contemporary, ecologically friendly and responsibly constructed Roundhouse by Rotunda.

Call us today for your free non-obligation site survey and discover yet another myriad of reasons why a timber modular classroom would benefit your school.

It was with much glee that we checked back on our client in Derbyshire to see how she was getting along with her new site of ‘Glamping units’ (AKA Rotundas!) on her idyllic site in the beautiful Derbyshire Dales National Park.

Not only has she set a precedent for a planning approval in a National Park for 3x lodge units as an alternative tourism destination, but she’s taking bookings faster than you can say ‘Roundhouse’ and is setting the trend for the new style of luxury-escapes (conied the “Four Seasons Lodge” by travel agents) style demand seen on the rise in the UK.

They’ve only really been up and running since April but are already booked up on all three units every weekend and have amassed some wonderful testimonials!

Here are two of them:

❝ Peaceful, comfortable, cosy;  the roundhouse ticked all the boxes for a relaxing short break immersed in the beautiful Derbyshire countryside. We had taken hot water bottles and extra thick jumpers, but didn’t need any of them, as the underfloor heating keeps the roundhouse pleasantly warm all the time. Tamsyn’s warm welcome and the complimentary homemade bread and cookies, plus milk and butter in the fridge, made our stay even more special. We look forward to a return visit. ❞

❝ The roundhouse was just amazing!!! It had everything we could have ever wanted in it and made us feel like we had properly escaped everything for a couple of days (which was the plan). The whole place was spotless, the bed was so comfortable, the underfloor heating was lovely to wake up to, home-made biscuits and freshly baked bread to greet us and in general the site is so peaceful it felt like we were there alone 🙂 All just perfect! Pam was such a great host and cant recommend this place enough. We cant wait to book to go again 🙂 If you’re looking and considering the roundhouses to stay then get it booked straight away because you wont be disappointed. ❞

So if you’re thinking about installing a Rotunda in your garden or school please head over to her website (http://www.netherfarmroundhouses.co.uk/accomodation.html) and book yourself a couple of nights to see for yourself how the Roundhouse feels before you jump in!

In his new book The Nurture Effect: How the Science of Human Behavior Can Improve Our Lives and Our World,  Psychologist Anthony Biglan describes how interventions aimed at creating nurturing environments could help solve some of society’s most stubborn, harmful, and costly issues.   Crime, delinquency, depression, and heart disease are often, he explains, the outcomes of environments that fail to promote well-being.

According to Biglans research, we have the capacity to increase increase societal well-being by creating environments that minimize socially and biologically harmful conditions, teach and promote prosocial behavior, limit destructive behaviors, and support individuals in pursuing their values.

By cultivating compassionate, positive, nurturing environments we can raise the standards of living, improve cognitive development in our chidren, increase education, reduce violence and prevent crime.

“Anthony Biglan pulls out the common threads to show that it is possible to make families, schools, and the larger social context more nurturing and ultimately to create nurturing environments so vital to well-being and to preventing widespread harm”   Lisbeth B.Schorr senior fellow at the centre for the Study of Social Policy

Within the framework of this book, Biglan calls for a public health movement akin to the smoke-free campaign of the last 50 years. He suggests the science behind nurturing environments could drive a similar shift in public health and well-being.

Mental health is a hot-topic in the media at the moment; The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry are spearheading the Heads Together campaign to end stigma around mental health and there’ve been articles spinning around in the press about the importance of recognising the importance of addressing mental health issues on a national level.

“Through our work with young people, emergency response, homeless charities, and with veterans, we have seen time and time again that unresolved mental health problems lie at the heart of some of our greatest social challenges.”

In the recent podcast with Prince Harry, he openly states that it became blindingly obvious to him through work with war veterans that “even if it was a small problem in your youth, something (Afghanastan, in a lot of these cases) was the trigger for these issues to come forward”.

It would seem this topic is also well on trend with other researchers (John Read & Richard P. Bentall) coming up with the same conclusions and implications of childhood wellbeing (or lack of it):

Childhood adveristy and mental health problems  The British Journal of Psychiatry (2012)

Many researchers are now exploring the mechanisms and processes by which events in childhood can lead to mental health problems years later.    For example, in an attempt to generate a genuinely integrated psycho-socio-biological approach,³ the traumagenic neurodevelopmental model⁹ of psychosis (proposed by J.R. and colleagues) draws on the evidence that the biochemical and structural abnormalities found in people diagnosed with schizophrenia, which have often been portrayed as evidence of a ‘brain disease’, are also found in the brains of traumatised children.

Recent studies have demonstrated that a wide range of adversities, and not just sexual abuse, are predictors of many forms of mental ill health.  Some of these adversities have been shown to be intergenerational, so that parents who themselves suffered in childhood struggle to provide an optimum environment for their own children.

I don’t know whether you caught it, but Radio4 Womans hour recently interviewed Countess Bathurst, the former High Sheriff of Gloucestershire who is one of the founders of the WI group at HMPrison Eastwood Park.  Sarah claimes that “before I started work as high sheriff I was old-school.   I really believed that if somebody was in prison, they’d done something wrong, that’s where they needed to be.  But, I have been so re-educated and I have learnt so much about the larger picture, about the background of these women, what they’ve gone through and the challenges that they’ve faced throught their lives which have led them down this enormous mentally destructive path.   Nobody wants to go to prison, sometimes they find themselves on this dreadful rollercoaster ride, it’s rather like gong down the bob sleigh, your going down faster and faster, there’s no brakes and there’s no way of getting out of it until you spin out of control and that’s what happens.  For most women, going into prison is a huge shock.  Many of them go in for a first offence, a third of women in prison have spent time in care as a child.”

And she speaks about this subject at the same time that The British Medical Association have published a report on the vital role doctors have to play in preventing vulnerable children and young people ending up in custody  Young lives behind bars: The health and human rights of children and young people detained in the criminal justice system, sets out how doctors can recognise risk factors for future offending and seize the opportunity to intervene.

Writing in the Foreword to the report, Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “The Prison Reform Trust commissioned a study of children in prison to learn more about the 6,000 children who went into some form of custody in the six months from July to December in 2008.  Many had unmet mental health needs or a learning disability or difficulty.  A depressingly familiar story for health and justice professionals and others who care for vulnerable young people.”

Imagine if, through the simple act of nurturing our young we could actually obliterate crime and even remove the requirement for a prison system altogether? Could we manage to create a new, crime-free and compassionate, loving society in just one generation?

The future of our society is now firmly in our hands; whether we’re nursery nurses, school govenors, mothers, classroom builders, teachers, headmasters, doctors, nannies and childcare workers.  

Make no mistake about it, the early years childcare arena is the most critical for creating a well-balanced, caring, compassionate, prosocial, happy, productive society.

If you’re a school or nursery, and you’re looking to implement a new learning, sensory or functional action zone environement, please speak to us, we are incredibly passionate about how we can be of service to you, to create your physical nurturing space.

We can’t alleviate all of the worlds problems in one day, but cocooning children in a warm  and protective timber-framed Roundhouse is a good place to start.