Support Services for Young People Activity

If you’re aged 11-18 years old, there are lots of support services for young people in Stockport to help if you’re not okay. It’s important to monitor your physical and mental wellbeing, recognise the symptoms in yourself and others when you’re struggling, and know where to go to get support.

This short activity – ideal to deliver in the classroom or engage in at home – encourages students to think about why we might need help and where we can go to access support if needed.

You can use this activity as part of our lesson plan on preparing for adulthood and support for young people, watching our introductory video below and signposting to information about common student concerns. Other resources that may help with this topic include:

Use this activity as a prompt to encourage students to monitor their own wellbeing, engage in mindfulness activities and set small goals to maintain a healthy lifestyle, diet, exercise schedule or sleep patterns. Perhaps incorporate into other activities to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week (13th-19th May 2024) or Children’s Mental Health Week (5th-11th February 2024).

Download Support Services for Young People Activity

How to use

This Support Services for Young People activity focuses on helping young people to consider when they might need support and where to access it. It encourages students to think about their own circumstances, realistic challenges or problems they may encounter over the next few years and learn about the local support services, people or tools they can use to help them should the need arise.

Instructions:

Print out the sheet provided (use pages 2 and 3 for a printer friendly copy and print landscape double-sided if possible) and fold three times to create a tri-fold flyer design.

Lead a discussion into common student concerns, why/when students may experience these issues and how they may present themselves/their potential impact on our lives and physical and mental wellbeing.

These could include:

  • Finding schoolwork difficult
  • Having trouble concentrating in class
  • Exam stress
  • Worried about leaving school or college
  • Worried about starting college, university or an apprenticeship
  • Worried about finding work or needing a part-time job
  • Struggling to juggle their academic and personal commitments
  • Tricky relationships with friends and friendship groups
  • Finding lunchtimes difficult, particularly if you have eating problems, anorexia or bulimia#
  • Not getting on with teachers
  • Loneliness
  • Bullying
  • Receiving inappropriate comments from classmates or teachers
  • Problems at home – including relationships with parents or siblings, housing issues or simply feeling unsupported
  • Going to school with anxiety, depression, OCD or any other mental health condition
  • Going back to school after being excluded, expelled or suspended
  • Specific difficulties such as dyslexia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia or autism
  • Financial concerns
  • Worries about the wider world

Discuss some of the local support services available to help young people and encourage them to find out more about them by visiting their websites. Many have short videos you could show in class. Thinking about the concerns students feel they are most likely to experience (now or in the future), ask them to use page 2 to write down some details about the support service(s) that could help them (including their contact details and what they offer).

This could include:

Finally, lead a discussion as to who/where else students could go to access help. Use page 3 to make a list of how/where to ask for help. This could be a list of people and contact details or simply ideas of what to say or how to ask.

Encourage students to keep this flyer somewhere handy, share with their family/parents/carers or keep somewhere accessible at home so they can revisit as needed and keep fresh in their minds.