World Wellbeing Week – 24th to 28th June 2019
The Five Ways to Wellbeing are a set of evidence-based public mental health messages aimed at improving the mental health and wellbeing of the whole population. Our Facts4Life 30 day Wellbeing Challenge and sets of Connect, Take Notice and Give activities provide opportunities for children (and adults!) to develop awareness and application of the ‘Feel Good Five’ (5 Ways).
If you are registered on our site take a look at our Mental Health resources for our Five Ways to Wellbeing based school assembly materials. If not, download our Facts4Life 30 day Wellbeing Challenge Sheet and use it to embark upon your own challenge, focusing upon each of the 5 Ways in turn: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Learn and Give. Good luck!
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.
Facts4Life Latest
Press Release: Innovation in health education helping children ride ups and downs of life, study shows…
Innovation in health education helping children ride ups and downs of life, study shows.... A new study by the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) into work going on in Gloucestershire schools shows that young people are becoming more responsible for...
Facts4Life is great. But where can I fit it in?
The Facts4Life resources are proving to be very popular amongst schools in Gloucestershire. As well as central training courses which are attended by one or two members of staff from a school, we are also getting many requests to do whole staff training, often with...
Radio 4 Inside Health today – Enlightenment not Entitlement
Enlightenment not Entitlement. Today we are on BBC Radio 4’s Inside Health programme at 9pm being interviewed by Dr Mark Porter.