A Million & Me: a cause for our times
Insight & strategy
Much has rightly been made of the impact of COVID 19 on the nation’s kids’ mental health with older kids’ mental wellbeing taking more of the news in the early days of Lockdown, especially as the GCSE and A Level classes of 2020 faced disrupted teaching and eventual cancellation of their public exams.
While the mental impact to these older teens has been undoubted, recent studies showed that many Senior School age pupils had reported less stress as a result of a reduction in pressure of curriculum, revision and exams when the final decision to halt public exams came.
Now, it emerges in reports this week, that some of the hardest hit mentally have been the younger primary through early secondary cohorts. Kids too young to be able to rationalise the scale of threat of the disease, too small to take on independent learning, and rationed when it came to the crucial social learning of school and the vital role of play and friendship in their development.
Which is why, the wider role of appeals like Children in Need (hitting our screens on November 13 this year) become even more critical this year.
I was lucky to start 2020 working on a fascinating insight, strategy and activation project for BBC Children in Need’s ‘A Million & Me’ fund – a £10m programme dedicated to promoting the understanding, skills and support networks needed to ensure early signs of issues with mental wellness in the younger cohort of 8-13 year olds are identified and managed by families, peers and schools alike, as they grow from young dependent child to fledgling independent ‘tween’ and on to early teen embarking on Secondary School. This 8-13 age band is where, according to research, a million kids of this age band could be better supported, equipped and nurtured to avoid potential descent into some of the more prevalent (and publicly spoken about) older teen mental health issues. Hence the name, A million & me.
No-one could deny that prevention is better than cure. But never has there been more of a need for this with our young people navigating the choppy waters of COVID uncertainty. So, if you are already a Children in Need supporter – but associate it more with its amazing works with the disabled, disadvantaged and disenfranchised kids of this country - it’s worth knowing that donations are also working hard to help stop mental health problems before they’ve started. And that can only make the best possible sense.
Huge luck to the Children in Need team this Friday. I, for one will be tuned in, tissues and debit card at the ready and cheering on the amazing work the team does, and knowing that valuable funds will also be fuelling a Million & Me’s life changing partner programmes’ work.
Learn more at https://www.bbcchildreninneed.co.uk/grants/a-million-and-me/