Educational training to improve young people's mental health

I am the learning mentor for Children in Care at St Mary Redcliffe and Temple School in Bristol. I lead support and data for our Kinship Care pupils and I support some previously looked after young people and some children who have returned home from care too. My role is unique within the school and the level of emotional support and need for care by my cohort is great. Currently, I spend most of my time bonding with my young people – playing games, finding out about interests, doing fun things together. It is also during this time that they open up the most. It has taken time to build trust with them and I am always taken aback at how open they are, exploring their emotions and feelings about past events, as well as the present. It is at this time I am faced with how vulnerable they are and I acknowledge my own shortfalls and understanding of exactly what trauma means to these people and I would like to learn how I can help them better. I explore charities, I have completed brief bits of training from the HOPE Virtual School and I read texts, but I am extremely keen to do more. I am very conscious of saying or doing the wrong thing and the detrimental impact this may have on the young people I have come to care so much about at my school.

I feel very privileged to do my job, my relationships with my students are really good, but in order to help them as best I can and any other communities in the future, I would like to complete training at a much deeper level. I plan to complete the Diploma in Trauma and Mental Health Informed Schools and Communities. This is accredited by Trauma Informed Schools UK – a charity and now nationally recognised training body focusing on trauma and counselling skills. The cost of the course is £1,595. If I complete this I would then like to go on to complete the Diploma in Counselling Teenagers, which I can do half price at £4.500.

My school, a long side so many others in Bristol at the moment, is struggling financially and does not have the means to contribute to this training, although they recognise how impactful it would be to do. So I am asking you. Will you sponsor me? I plan to swim the equivalent of the English Channel during the Summer holidays (within the 6 weeks), which for me is a challenge. The Channel is 21 miles/ 34 Kilometres. That is the equivalent to 1,360 lengths of a 25m pool. My max in one session so far is 40. I have a little training to do. Will you help me support some of the most vulnerable and wonderful young people of our city? The money I raise will go towards the planned CPD as noted above and any more money raised, I will give directly to my school for the CiC/ PLAC/ KC budget to spend on resources, trips out and out of the ordinary learning experiences to really help enrich their lives in school.

I would be so grateful of absolutely anything you have to offer, be it an office collection of any loose change, which I could collect or you could post to my school, to a donation from your organisation to my GoFundMe. I’d be thrilled. I am ambitious and I am looking to raise way beyond my CPD total, in order to provide concrete resources for my group with an ongoing budget.

I am well aware that what I am asking seems out of the ordinary and potentially even a scam. If you want to chat about the work I do and find out more, or verify who I am you can find me on the school website: https://www.smrt.bristol.sch.uk/parents-and-carers/who-to-contact

I am Ms Barry. The school address and my contact details are at the bottom of that page. Please do call, I’d love to speak to you and share more about the work I do.

I look forward to hearing from you. Anyone who is able to contribute I will contact by the beginning of September with details of how I got on, the total raised and exactly how that is going to impact my young people during the coming academic year.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please wish me luck.

Gemma Barry

Learning Mentor for CiC/ PLAC/ KC lead