School Gets Parents Involved In Teenage Mental Health

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Putney High School launches an app-based toolkit designed to help parents

Putney High School GDST have introduced “Positive for Parents”- a digital toolkit to give parents greater awareness and understanding of their daughters’ and their own emotional wellbeing.

The app, created as an extension to the Positive Schools Programme, is being rolled out for the first time to help parents, teachers and children to address “hand in hand” issues around mental health .

The app is designed to help parents to “check in” with their own and their children’s mental wellbeing with tools such as an “emotional barometer” the “worry filter” and the “inner coach”. It helps parents to find a shared language with which to address, discuss and enhance emotional wellbeing together with their children.


Suzie Longstaff

Headmistress Suzie Longstaff told this website that it was important to extend the app to parents because: "Parents may worry how to approach these subjects with their children. With all the recent media surrounding Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook, we need to be proactive in helping parents and teenagers navigate adolescence safely.

We are giving families practical strategies to use together, to support positive patterns of behaviour and to be open about mental health and wellbeing. Many parents are terrified of the dangers of the modern world. This kind of partnership approach equips parents with the skills and confidence to parent in the modern world".

It includes a 16 week, micro bite learning programme introduces accessible science from the world of psychology along with Positive tools that can be applied in everyday life to help improve and maintain psychological wellbeing.

On pupils response to the app, Suzie Longstaff said that they: "Think it’s normal because being open and down to earth about these issues is very much part of Putney’s ethos. We’ve already had fantastic feedback from parents who are really keen to collaborate and are delighted that we’re taking a joined-up approach to emotional wellbeing whether it’s in the classroom or around the dinner table.

The headmistress commented that the staff at Putney High have found the app has developed greater awareness: " It’s so often the little things, more than the big things that can affect how we feel on an average day. Pupils and teachers at Putney have been working with the tools as part of a taught programme at school. It’s been helping to develop greater awareness, better focus, and stronger social relationships. It’s wonderful that now parents too can join in with the programme and be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to their family’s mental wellbeing.

The app gives parents more insight into the school’s existing Positive Schools Programme, which is improving emotional literacy and mental wellbeing for pupils and has been taken up by the 25 schools and academies of the Girls’ Day School Trust.

February 8, 2019