Disseminating the health improvement

We decided to create PEEPS as a health improvement for Normanton. We found that one of the biggest issues raised was children presenting to the GP’s with depression and mental health related issues. The GP disclosed to us that children as young at 8 years old we being put on medication to combat the symptoms of mental health. We feel that ‘Positive Education for Emotion Promotion in Schools’ will help children to not only feel comfortable to talk about how they are feeling, but also why they might be feeling a certain way. With positive education, children can learn new coping mechanisms. Our aim is to help children to understand when their mental health is changing and to give them the skills to cope with it. We want children to be able to recognise the signs of mental health and have the confidence to talk about how they are feeling. The biggest thing we want children to take away from the PEEPS sessions is that ‘it’s ok not to be ok’.

In order to promote our health scheme initiative we have devised several methods for people to access the information about the service we provide.

Firstly, we have created a leaflet that can be handed out to the children’s parents to let them know all about PEEPS and what we do in each session. There is also a contact number on the bottom of the leaflet so if parents have any specific concerns regarding their children’s mental health they can contact us directly we can signpost them in the right direction for help. The leaflets will also be available in the GP surgeries. As our locality visit highlighted to us the high number of children visiting the GPs for mental health related issues, we believe that if the doctors can tell children and their parents about PEEPs while they are in their consultations, it will encourage children to take part in the sessions.

In order to bring PEEPS into the 21st century and connect with a wider target audience, we have created both a Twitter page and a Facebook page. We believe that going digital will hep to get our message across to more people and give them the knowledge and understanding of the service we provide. Most schools today have social media pages and so we will be joining with the schools in order to get them to promote the PEEPS services. The Twitter page will be live with #PEEPS as our handle. This will allow people from the wider community and other areas to see the different work we are doing. We aim to host weekly Twitter chats in order to engage with the wider community and help to promote positive mental health throughout Normanton. We believe that having social media pages will help to bridge the gap between the ‘paper age’ and the ‘digital age’. Social media can be accessed anytime, anywhere. This is important to us because we want parents and people in the community to be able to log on at any time and be able to read about the we are doing and the changes we are making.

We have also devised posters that will be put up around the schools and the local community centres advertising the services that we are offering. We think that having as man people as possible see the work that we are doing, it will help to end the stigma around mental health and will help to promote the idea that it’s okay not to be okay. Having the posters visible to people around the community will allow people who don’t have children to understand the movement we are trying to create. Having posters promoting good mental health might help to get other members of the community to think about their own mental heath and may give them the courage to speak out if they are struggling.