Isle Listen Schools Service Update 2022/23

Isle Listen’s Listening Service has supported 267 young people, over 1,370 sessions this academic year. The schools listening team have been supporting students within all the Island’s secondary schools along with a small number of primary age students.

This academic year we included some additional categories for young person’s reason for referral to ensure we got an accurate representation of the issues they were facing. The most common referral reason was worries, covering around 38% of referrals, followed by family issues, low mood, anger, and social issues. The one-to-one interventions provided by Isle Listen Wellbeing Practitioners have seen a 71% Clinical Improvement rate, this is the difference between pre & post measures using the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing (Short-Score).

We look forward to the next academic year as we continue to offer low level early interventions to young people across the Isle of Man.  

During this previous academic year the school’s team have delivered our full educational programme to a total of 23 Primary Schools across the island and are proud to have continued this relationship with all 23 schools as they have chosen to utilise our service again into the next academic year. Alongside the continuing schools, we have also built relationships over the summer with a further 5 Primary Schools and will therefore be delivering our full programme to a total of 28 Primary Schools in the academic year of 2023/24. 

As we are continually looking to improve the service we offer to schools, this year we will also be piloting an 8-week consecutive programme across 6 of the Primary Schools on the Isle of Man. This trial will see all 6 Primary Schools receive 8 educational sessions across an 8-week period, rather than the previous format of the sessions spread throughout the year. This pilot is designed to help build stronger relationships with both the schools and students and will work as a Mental Health Course in which students will take part in. 

Over the Summer the school’s team have also been working hard to update the educational programme that is currently offered to ensure that it is interactive and engaging as well as being informative for the students. In doing so, the school’s team have created a total of 16 new sessions that will initiate more group discussions in class and will allow students to become more active during their sessions. 

We have had a great few weeks running various summer sessions around the island.  

Our creative workshops have been really popular, with each workshop having a mental health theme. The young people loved making their own worry dolls, positivity jars, personality masks and calming sea glass collages. We have been so impressed by their levels of creativity and inspiration! 

We tried out a new session this year – Dungeons & Dragons! Led by one of our Wellbeing Practitioners David, who plays D&D himself regularly, these sessions proved popular. The young people really engaged with the storylines and their imaginations really stood out.  

Our transition sessions for Y6 students went well, giving young people moving from primary to secondary school a chance to meet new peers and build relationships. The young people enjoyed the team building games and some great conversations were had around managing our mental health in times of change. 

Active Souls returned this year, with Mikey running some really fun and high energy sessions for our young people. Based around classic playground games, these sessions were a space to burn off some energy and have lots of laughs! 

Danny from The Meadow ran a series of CrossFit workshops for young people this summer, assisted by one of our Wellbeing Practitioners Jay, who is a CrossFit regular. Everyone was so engaged in the workshops, top effort was shown, and it was clear to see levels of confidence improving week by week. 

Overall, Summer Sessions 2023 have been a great success and we are very grateful to Standard Bank for sponsoring these fun events over the summer period.  

We are very much looking forward to returning to schools from Monday 11th September to continue working collaboratively with each school and being there to offer educational and 1-2-1 mental health support to our Islands students.