First Aid for Mental Health – What we offer

Click here for an application form

R World will fund one qualified teacher per school or university to do a First Aid for Mental Health Instructor Course. The course we recommend is run by NUCO over three days. On completion, trainers will be awarded a NUCO Training Instructor Certificate and will be qualified to teach students Level 2 Award in First Aid for Mental Health. The student course will take one day and these skills will be useful not only at school and university, but also in the home and in the workplace.

Once we have approved funding, please refer to the NUCO website for the dates and venues, then fill out the application form and forward it to Lesley@Rworld.org.uk to complete section 4.  We would love to receive a blog from you once you have started to train students so that we can add it to our website to show other schools and universities what impact the training has had.

We recognise the importance of schools taking a whole school approach to wellbeing and mental health and would like to draw attention to the wellbeing award for schools. This award ‘focuses on changing the long-term culture of the whole school, using an evidence-based framework to drive change’. For more details of this award, please check out this link.

Training in Schools

Below is a short video from Matt Tithecott, the Assistant Head Teacher (Mental Health and Wellbeing) at Simon Langton School for Boys, Canterbury. Simon Langton is our pilot school and has been brilliant at working with us to help us get a framework in place. Matt was already a qualified First Aid for Mental Health training instructor and is about to train students. He was impressed with how many students have expressed an interest in doing the training which goes to show that students are very aware of the importance of good mental health and are keen to help their friends.

Training in Universities

Nick Clare who was Robbie’s personal tutor in the Geography Department at Nottingham University, has already qualified as a First Aid for Mental Health instructor via R World funding.  He is very keen to train students in First Aid for Mental Health as soon as possible given the increase in mental health problems and pressures on students as a result of COVID-19. He’s booked in some sessions around Easter to fit in with the students’ timetables to pass on his knowledge of First Aid for Mental Health. The students we spoke to in the GeogSoc are grateful that we are doing this work as no one has been immune to the extra stress lockdown has brought to our lives. Even before lockdown, a mental health crisis was reported.