For Teachers & Key Workers
For Parents, Carers & Families
For Health Professionals
COVID-19
During the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, Facts4life is continuing to support schools and families to ride the ups and downs of their health.
In addition to the activities accessible on our Parents & Carers page, we are producing health-related activities for schools which aim to engage and reassure, encouraging self-care and supporting wellbeing. These resources can be used upon return to school and as part of your health curriculum. If your school cannot access these resources please get in touch via our contact page.
What is Facts4Life?
Facts4Life is a new way of thinking about our health which challenges commonly held beliefs about illness and builds resilience. We do this by exploring three key ideas:
- Riding the Ups and Downs – sometimes we feel well, sometimes not. That’s normal.
- Keeping Balanced – we often don’t recognise that most of the time, most of us get better from most illnesses without medical help
- Smoothing the Path – we can learn to take greater responsibility for our health and respond positively to life’s challenges
We work in a range of settings:
Schools:
Our training programme and resources for primary and secondary teachers provide opportunities to learn more about physical and mental health (as well as relationships education) within the curriculum. We also run workshops for parents to provide support for children’s health.
Pre-schools:
We are working with pre-schools and children’s centres so that younger children and their parents can benefit from the Facts4Life messages about health.
Why Facts4Life?
We live in a climate where many worry about health and we often assume that perfect health is attainable. These unrealistic expectations can lead to the idea that medical services should be able to step in and fix us whenever we feel unwell.
We believe that if we have developed the language to talk about our experience of health and illness, we are then able to take greater ownership of the factors that affect us. We can not only build understanding but develop positive attitudes and change behaviour.
Never has there been a better time to open up the dialogue for young people, families and the wider community.
GP Surgeries:
We offer an Education for Self-Management course for patients who wish to develop further strategies to support physical and mental health.
Our work with schools and pre-schools in Gloucestershire is funded by Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group and is currently free to all Gloucestershire schools. To find out about training in Gloucestershire or in your area, click here, or contact us if you would like to know more.
What difference does Facts4Life make?
Watch our short video below to find out more….