With children and young people also now back in education World Mental Health Day 2020 (10th October) could be the most important one yet.
With this is mind, we welcomed the invitations for Three Eggs to feature as a guest on two important mental health podcasts. And relished the opportunity to discuss how employers and educators can better support their staff and pupils.
Our interview on ‘Mental’, centred around how recent reforms to include mental health education as part of the national curriculum will transform young lives. Whilst on the ’DiverCity’ podcast, we focused on the compelling reasons for supporting employees and leaders with dedicated mental health programmes.
Louise Newby, Three Eggs Director, explains: “Being involved in popular and far reaching podcasts like these was a great opportunity to discuss the value of mental health support at all ages and stages of life. We were very happy to play our part in these important discussions”.
With personal experience in the education sector Louise was an obvious choice to join host Bobby Temps on his ‘Mental’ podcast. Bobby has been instrumental in campaigning for the addition of mental health education to the mandatory teaching curriculum for all schools in the UK. After much lobbying mental health education has finally been added to the curriculum for all schools in England and Wales. The campaign continues to push for Scotland and Northern Ireland to be included.
“I feel excited by the new curriculum”, Louise concluded. “How wonderful for that cohort of children progressing through life that they have had that message from a young age; breaking down stigmas and barriers.”
For the ‘DiverCity’ episode, Louise featured alongside Rosemary Frazer, a campaigner for disability equality and inclusion, who has helped nurture and support countless initiatives, campaigns and small and medium enterprises in the disability sector.
During the podcast Louise discussed how to best approach the different needs of employees returning to work, and how the office landscape looks now. Plus, the importance of leading by example, with a ‘top down approach’.
“Probably most important of all, is that senior leaders share their own experiences of mental ill health, how they cope with stress, for example. So that rather than being a sign of weakness, it’s something that’s seen as a sign of strength, a sign of resilience, that, ‘Yes, work is tough sometimes, and we all feel pressure from work, and this is how I deal with it. And I’m prepared to talk to you about it because it’s not a weakness’. It’s not something that should be hidden away.”
Continuing on the theme of Invisible disabilities Louise concluded: “These are often invisible because people are scared to look for them, businesses should make use of the data available to them to better help their workforce to cope. Even holding regular feedback meetings to understand how people are feeling”.
“At Three Eggs we’re very aware that, for some organisations, mental health is very much a tick-box exercise, and there are lots of tokenistic gestures.” commented Louise: “We would say that you need to have this as part of your culture. That it’s a fundamental part of why your organisation is so successful, and you recognise that that’s why your organisation is successful.”
Follow the link for the full ‘Mental’ episode http://ow.ly/eKq850BD27B
The full ‘DiverCity’ episode can be found here http://divercitypodcast.com/2020/09/23/series-nine-episode-one/
Picture supplied by Foyers Photography
