Children & Young People - A Day In The Life of a CYP Mental Health Link Worker
GAMME (Groups, active monitoring and mentoring for children and young people) aims to support children and young people in reside in Warwick Town (CV34 area) with their mental health and wellbeing.
Below is a typical day in the life of our GAMME Mental Health Link Worker for Children & Young People.
7:00am – 8:00am: Get ready for the day, start by checking calendar and comms and making sure I have the resources ready for the sessions ahead.
8:30am-8:45am: Now at a nearby school, I prep the room for the session, moving furniture from other spaces, clearing tables, putting up our group posters and getting out the materials we need for our first session.
8:45am-9:30am: Our first group of the day is a session targeting older primary school students who have become school avoidant. We look to discuss what barriers we face with coming to school and make the morning more appealing by having some quiet time outside of the classroom. This morning, we look at some Yoga poses as a way we can help our bodies relax and regulate our breathing. We finish up with a Mindful Walk around their school garden, discussing how our bodies and minds feel after some exercise.
9:30am-10:30am: Building resilience group: this week’s resilience builder was learning a new skill and giving us an opportunity to revisit our ‘calm-down skills’. We ran a mini drawing class, drawing fresh flowers and following a step-by-step guide to detailed drawings. Whenever the students felt like giving up, we discussed why they felt that way and what skills they now had to help them calm down and persevere. We went for a calming walk and had a short break of free time at the end of the session. The children took their drawings home and I was able to share some positive feedback with the teaching staff when I dropped them back to class.
10:30am-11:00am: In our weekly triage session, we looked at several new referrals that were most suited for 1-1 work and assigned them to our partnership team at Life Space where they have access to 12 weeks of supported mentorship. We had new volunteer mentors onboarding, so we were luckily able to offer their service to a new referral, putting them forward for 6 weeks of hour-long wellbeing support sessions.
11:00am-12:00pm: A month into weekly friendship sessions with a group of UKS2 boys. We discussed the importance of communication and played several games that showed how quickly misunderstandings can escalate when we aren’t clear with our communication. From blindfolded tasks guided by the rest of the team to a drawing guessing game. We finished the session discussing the real-life uses of communication and revisited times when our communication could have been improved to support better outcomes with our friends.
12:00pm-1:00pm: Over lunch, I tidied the room, prepped for the next sessions and wrote up the morning’s session notes. I had a walk around the area and enjoyed the sunshine for my break, grabbing a coffee at the local café. I catch up with members of the school staff on my way back in and let them know how the groups have been going, we discuss plans for the following week.
1:00pm-2:00pm: In our final group session of the day, we look at friendship issues, this time focusing on supporting a group of girls who have been struggling with repeated arguments. We are nearing the end of these group sessions and the girls have had some great results, no longer arguing with one another and having apologised to each other for previous incidents. For this week’s activity, we look at ‘what makes someone fun to play with’, we list the traits we appreciate when playing with our friends and the traits that we want to avoid. We then played several different board games and we each presented each other with a token every time they showed the positive attributes, praising one another and adding another level of more positive competition to the games – who can play the nicest!
2:00pm-3:30pm: I went to a new school to meet with a student who had been referred in through one of our locals GPs. We discussed what they were going through, as well as the service offered and what support we could provide. We did a ‘get to know you’ activity to discuss all the things he liked and disliked and what was most important to him.
3:30pm-4:30pm: I catch-up on any comms I’ve missed during the day and then enter all my individual as well as group write ups for today’s sessions. I check through the resources for tomorrow’s session and print off any spares we need, confirming the arrival time of our group volunteer with the school. Write up final session and send over any signposting docs, completing referral paperwork and making sure we’re ready for the rest of the week ahead.
