At The Centre for Emotional Health, we are passionate about our vision of everyone living an emotionally healthy life. We want all children to be supported to build and sustain healthy relationships by experiencing responsive relationships with those around them. We know that everyone needs good emotional health for themselves as individuals and also to enable them to contribute to creating an emotionally healthy culture wherever they are.
The recent report published by Child of the North and Anne Longfield’s Centre for Young Lives think tank, “Building the foundations of a new ‘Sure Start’: An evidence-based plan for connecting and coordinating support and services in and around education settings” sets out the case for a new updated model of Sure Start that puts schools and nurseries at its heart. It proposes a national network of ‘hubs’ in educational settings that can provide a range of services for families.
The report is clear that with the right support network most schools have the potential to be the provider of these vital resources for children, families and communities and, with the right amount of funding, can deliver more than just lessons in a classroom. As trusted institutions, schools are more often than not, the first port of call for families when they need help. They are viewed as a key part of the local community. We believe, in order for the next generation to thrive, we need to support the adults in children’s lives to develop their own emotional health assets, so they can then provide responsive relationships to the children in their care. Every single adult around a child is crucial. This creates healthy inter-generational patterns of relating, which benefit families, communities and ultimately society. If children have a stable, responsive environment to enable them to develop the foundations of resilience and good, lifelong emotional health it can significantly improve their life chances.
Our relationship-centred approach means we work in a collaborative way and in partnership wherever possible. We would like to see everyone experiencing positive relationships so that they can both contribute to and benefit from being in emotionally healthy families, communities, schools and workplaces.
If you would like to know more about how our work, based on The Nurturing Programme, can help your school or community then please explore our website www.emotionalhealth.org.uk or better still, email us at hello@emotionalhealth.org.uk – we look forward to chatting some more about emotional health.
Comments