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Cartoon Sam’s Positive Mental Health journey for young children in school

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Published on: March 24, 2023

Assistant Educational Mental Health Practitioner, Emma Turton at our Barnsley Compass Be MHST, is receiving great feedback from teachers and young children after creating a cartoon character they can relate to.

In this video, Emma takes us through the workshop and explains how younger Key Stage Two (seven to 11 year olds) get to know the ups and downs of Sam’s every day life and learn that it is normal to feel different emotions at different times.

Emma says: “Sam first appeared in our Workshop that we created for Key Stage two children about maintaining positive mental health. It’s called your journey to positive mental health.”

She explains how she takes the children “through a day in the life of Sam”.

Emma continued: “We go through that in quite a lot of detail and explore the different kinds of emotions Sam might feel throughout his day and it’s to show the children that emotions ebb and flow, they change constantly and that’s totally normal and totally fine and that happens for everyone really.

“The children really like Sam. In the Key Stage One workshop, we explore a little bit further – how would some feel in different scenarios?”

Emma said: “We explain that we’re constantly developing these workshops – they’re quite new – and teachers give us really good feedback.

“We do all feedback with the children as a whole class and we ask them what have you learned, what have you enjoyed, how could we make it even better?”

She said that one child had told her that it was good to know that other people feel all the different feelings that they felt.”

And creative Emma added: “Sometimes, it’s just knowing that that’s normal and other people do feel those feelings. So, yes, the feedback we’ve had is really positive.”

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