Reflections: Scottish Book Trust Mental Health project. Elgin Academy, 17th Nov 2016.

Earlier in the Autumn we ran some outreach in Elgin Academy and spoke to some S3 pupils. Lindsay, one of the Champions who was part of this initial visit, returned this month to be part of a shared learning for other local schools in the project.

On Thursday the 17^th November I volunteered to go along to a talk at Elgin Academy. Shelagh Toonen their Librarian and Douglas Clark an English teacher had set up a project for S3 pupils on Literacy and Mental Health. Teachers from schools across Moray attended the talk.

I had joined Heidi earlier in the year to support her as a Champion of the Wellbeing Hub. She gave a talk on mental health to the students of Elgin Academy.

The project was funded and supported by the Scottish Book Trust. Emma from SBT gave a very interesting talk about their involvement in schools and showed a slide show of the BBC live talks with authors and schools.

Shelagh and Douglas spoke about the project saying they had a very positive reaction from the students, this enabled them to talk more openly about mental health issues.

They thanked Heidi for her talk and hoped that the Wellbeing Hub could work with them in the future.

As a Champion listening to them talk I understood that there is a need for a programme to be run in schools to keep awareness of mental health issues out in the open. Hopefully, The Moray Wellbeing Hub can promote that.