Wellbeing at Cobham Hall Our Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead, Miss Fenice, has had an incredibly busy term, launching a variety of initiatives for both students and staff. These have included training for students, details of which are opposite, and the creation of an action group for staff, introducing regular social events and opportunities to talk. The term started with Miss Fenice putting into practice her training from Girls on Board. This initiative, now shortlisted for a TES Wellbeing Initiative of the Year Award, aims to empower girls to manage their relationships with one another and solve their own friendships problems. Having been the first in the country to complete the training, Ms Fenice was keen to help support our students and share the strategies she had learned. She launched the programme with Year 11, and rolled it out to other years as the term progressed. To supplement the roll out of the programme, Miss Fenice hosted a ‘Four Week Focus on Friendship’; a series of workshops held in the School’s Wellbeing Centre looking at ways to mend fences after a fall out, considering the impact of things shared online, resisting peer pressure, how to forgive, and how to rebuild trust, amongst other topics. In addition, there was a ‘Time to Talk’ drop-in session during Children’s Mental Health Week in February, designed to encourage girls to pop into the Wellbeing Centre and discover the support and advice available. Later in the term, ‘Mindful Mondays’ were launched, run by Geography teacher Mrs Kipling, also a passionate advocate for youth mental health. These sessions were designed to support Years 11 and 13 as examinations approached.
Developing SelfEsteem with Dove
In early April, Years 7 and 8 took part in a workshop lead by Nadia Mendoza of the Self-Esteem Team, who support the Dove Self-Esteem Project. The girls were encouraged to reflect on society’s opinions on the perfect man and perfect woman, and the results demonstrated that the societal view of a ‘perfect’ woman was mostly based on appearance, and a ‘perfect’ man on what other traits he offers. Nadia then showed the girls how these views have changed throughout the last 100 years, showing that while something may be deemed attractive now, in a few years, it’ll change. Reflecting on her own experience of growing up, she explained that she never felt represented by the ‘model’ image and that the more she tried to fit society’s ideals, the less happy she became.
showed much more value based characteristics. To further emphasise this difference, Nadia asked the girls to consider the last compliment they gave someone, and think about who they know that they would like to spend two weeks with, and why that person. The responses showed that compliments were mostly appearance-based whilst spending time with someone showed how much more inner values were prized.
The discussion moved on to what makes people unique, and these
Nadia explained how even though while watching TV, or scrolling 8
through social media can make us feel insecure and sad about not match those societal ideals, we perpetuate it by complimenting people based on looks rather than values, giving the impression that appearance is of more worth than who they are as a person. The workshop ended with Nadia challenging the girls to create a ripple effect of complimenting their friends’ inner values more than how they look, and to question appearance ideals.
