Over two days last week our wellbeing ambassadors across year 8-10 have been taken part in Merseyside Youth Associations peer mentoring course TOTEM.

Designed and developed by young people for young people, ‘Talking Openly To Embrace Mental Health’ (TOTEM)’ gives them the skills to become confident peer mentors with a specific focus on mental health and emotional wellbeing; empowering them to champion mental health and tackle stigma within their school or organisation.

This peer mentor course focuses on mental health- specifically, it enables young people to recognise the signs and symptoms, understand what mental health is, build resilience and teach them how to have a conversation with someone who is struggling with their mental health.

The two day course finished with a Dragons’ Den style activity, where the groups  worked together to plan how they will implement peer mentoring within their school. The groups did a fantastic job at pitching their ideas and answered some tough questions from the 'dragons'. We look forward to seeing these ideas come to life in school. Well done to all involved