Leading School Mental Health Confidently | A Conversation with George Peterkin

Seeing that young man, that young lady in a week's time when they come back to school, even just to say to them, it's so good to see you back at school. Thank you for trusting me with what you shared last week. You know where I am. Hey everyone, I'm Shane Leaning. Welcome to Education Leaders, the chat-topping leadership podcast for school leaders just like you.

As an organizational coach, I've helped thousands of leaders worldwide lead with greater confidence, make better decisions and create winning teams. And on this show, we explore the strategies that are going to help you achieve your goals and transform your leadership. This episode is supported by the Tutor Development Trust and the International curriculum Association. Stay tuned to learn more.

Okay, today I'm chatting with George Peterkin. He's built something quite remarkable. Now George has founded Mind Your Health, which works globally with some of the leading international schools. He is passionate about making mental health support practical and accessible for schools.

And what I really love about this conversation today is how George breaks down mental health strategies into clear pillars. And trust me, you are going to love this. We are talking about why student voice should be a starting point, how to avoid jumping straight into solutions and the role that senior mental health leads can play in schools. Let's jump in.

We like to call them the three pillars. One is prevention, one is intervention, and then there's something called postvention. And, you know, these three pillars aren't really the newest concept. It's not something we've coined or trademarked or anything like that.

It's actually commonly used in quite a few providers and organizations. And we really started to push this terminology just over a year or so ago. In fact, we were in Asia for a conference and we had sponsored the events and we had to do a talk. And I thought, well, you know what, how could we tackle this differently and how could we not make it sound like a sales pitch?

And often the dialogue with a school when we first have that meeting with them. And I think back on my initial meeting seven years ago when we started the company to where they are now, back then I had no idea how to start a dialogue. Now, it's a bit of a roadmap for better use of another word for these three pillars in terms of, okay, which pillar for you right now is a bit crumbly? What about its foundation isn't great?

And last year we had over 100 DSL safeguarding leads at a conference. It goes without saying that intervention is actually the strongest pillar because we're in safeguarding. Safeguarding, for the most part, everybody envisioned that it's about intervention skills. What do we do when a situation happens? Then prevention has a pretty decent foundation.

And I was very proud of our art graphic for this, by the way. And then we showed the postvention and it's crumbly. It's decrepit. It's got no foundation whatsoever because often people think, what does postvention even mean?

I'm an ex-Latin teacher, by the way. So forgive me, a bit of Latin. Post means after. Vension stems from the word venio, which means to come, to come or go.

So it's what we do after, after an intervention. What do we do to make this person feel safe when they return to a school? What things could we put in place to build up those protective factors for them long term? So if I could give a real basic example, my focus is always with eating disorders.

A very complex disorder doesn't matter the complexity of any mental health disorder. We want children and adults to be in school. We want them to feel safe. We want them to cultivate good self-esteem and resilience and whatnot.

What do we say when a child is in recovery from anorexia? Do we bring it up with them? Do we acknowledge it when they come back to school a month later after the initial intervention? What things could we say? What things shouldn't we say?

That's what postvention looks like and postvention, much like intervention and prevention, it's catered to your school environment, it's catered to your culture, it's catered to actually the individual as well. What works for one child when they return to school is actually going to be very different to another and that's based on the difficulties they're going through. Naturally for us, it sounds a bit odd because mind you, health is all about intervention. For the most part, the best form of intervention is always prevention.

You and I both know this. We don't want to cure. We want to make sure people aren't actually ever unwell. So we are slowly going into the prevention route a lot more.

However, intervention skills must always be the biggest priority because sadly we can't prevent everything and that's not being pessimistic. There are just some things that come out of our control and we naturally have to feel empowered enough to carry out that intervention. This has really got me thinking because yes, we hear that term prevention is better than the cure. And so sometimes we think everything goes into that and intervention can be seen as a sign of failure of the prevention, I imagine, which I guess it absolutely can be and we know cases where it can be, but it isn't always.

Like sometimes intervention has to happen. But this postvention is really interesting to me because it's making me feel that I'm going through logically, even just in personal life, you know, with someone who's gone through something with mental health. And I'm fortunate to know a little in this area because my wife works in a similar industry to you and she works in the mental health space and she's an economist for it. So there's a lot of thinking about prevention and being able to talk to people and people are getting more comfortable at talking about intervention and how you're doing, how you're getting through.

But I'm almost thinking that postvention, when people return or people have had an intervention or something, it can get a bit awkward, maybe, like, what do you say? What do you do? Does anyone actually have training or scripts on where you go with that? I've never really thought about it that way.

Well, to be honest, what you've used as an example for intervention is also a form of postvention, but I will stereotype here. It's very British. We just ignore it. We carry on, you know, sort of idea. We're given that awkward eyebrow raise.

Hi, how are you doing? But I don't see how postvention can't be as much as seeing that young man, that young lady in a week's time when they come back to school, even just to say to them, it's so good to see you back at school. Thank you for trusting me with what you shared last week. You know where I am.

How's that not postvention? Something as simple as that. Simply say to them, you know I am if you need me in the future. That is a form of postvention.

Ironically, that's also a form of intervention, because intervention doesn't always have to be high safeguarding. It could just be checking in on little Johnny. It's always Johnny, isn't it? In year eight, say, Johnny, how are you getting on, mate? Everything okay? Great.

And this is a real big thing for me. When I work with schools, and it sounds really vulgar, you know, I run a company, so we need business. But it's not the big, extravagant things that have the biggest impact when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. It's actually the small things done consistently, because at the end of the day, you want to keep it simple. Think about nutrition.

At the end of the day, you break it down to the most simplistic things, protein, carbs, fats. It doesn't matter if you go to a five-star Michelin restaurant or whatever it is, you've got to go back to the basics. And it's no different when it comes to conversations, when it comes to postvention. So, you know, but again, it's all done by the individual.

Some kids, some adults, because we give support to adults as well, of course, in a school. It's as simple as how you're doing, you know, where I am. For others, it could be, as much as I hate to say it, very strong boundaries of, right, this is what needs to happen for you to have a return to school, a return to work. It's so individual, and that can be complex. But again, we're just thinking,

what is right for this person? What is right for me? What is right for the school? That's a really useful way to think about it almost in terms of a scale or a spectrum of support.

And it is interesting, you know, you use that question, how are you? You know where I am, as you say. They're really powerful statements of support, really, that sometimes can allow that next step. Well, it's a really nice example of postvention or an intervention, actually, to allow that person to talk.

I know if I can be really clever, it's also a form of prevention. One of the biggest preventative tools in the workplace, forget the children, one of the biggest forms of prevention is people just knowing that they can come forward and talk when they're struggling. Think about children, we're their safety net when it comes to them making mistakes. If they've got a teacher that's on their side and is encouraging them to get out of their comfort zone and get things wrong, ironically, they're more likely to go and push themselves and give it a go and build up that resilience and boost their own self-esteem because they know that there is a teacher that's on their side.

And if it works for children, it's going to work for adults. Just knowing that we have that support subconsciously actually builds up our own resilience that we're less likely going to need it in the future. So they do interweave. It's very clever, isn't it?

It's a very clever thing for me to say, but I'm a therapeutic counselor and I like to try to find the deepest stuff. But at the end of the day, they all do interweave. That's really, really helpful. Thank you, George.

So I wonder if we can take a little step back then. So listeners to this podcast are usually school leaders or department leaders, some leadership position. So they're going to be leading teams of people. And mental health needs are going to be something that comes up.

You can't escape it. Like wherever you work, there's going to be mental health needs, students, teachers, community members. So I wonder from your experience, because I know you work with many schools around the world, George. Like we were just talking about before we came in, how you have just been flying here, there and everywhere over these last few weeks.

I wonder if you might be able to share any best practices to get us started when developing a mental health strategy. So we were at school last Friday. There was a really lovely networking event. It was held by Dubai College.

And it was kind of a well-being teach meet, around 60-odd pastoral leads, well-being leads. People just focused on mental health while being attended. And I had a quick eight-minute slot. It was very odd.

They gave us each eight minutes rather than the round. So for me, not a problem. I can do a lot in eight minutes, don't you worry. But I think the time through some people...

Why is it not ten? Why is it not five? It was one of those things. And I love my quotes.

And I think it makes me look wiser than I am. But generally, these quotes are great. And one of them was, comparison is the thief of joy. And it was this whole idea of, I go into schools...

And again, at the beginning, when I was having discussions with schools, I was mentioning other schools but in the wrong way, which is that there is no one-size-fits-all. Don't get me wrong. Naturally, there is training. There's courses we run, which is the same for all schools.

But much like with maths, we've got a dozen maths teachers in a school. They're all teaching the same formulas, the same timetables. But they all have their own kind of personality added to it. And I think that was really important.

So at this TeachMeet, we gave them a bit of a roadmap. We didn't do prevention, intervention and postvention. We broke it down to students, teachers, middle leaders, senior leaders. In terms of thinking, how could you tackle CPD?

There's always some go-to generic things, Shane, which every school should be doing. And forgive me, I sound like Del Boy selling stuff from the back of my van here. But genuinely, schools must have mental health first-aiders. That's just a basic practice.

We must have people who are trained and are kind of legally protected when it comes to interventions. We want to empower the students. So yes, we do workshops on that. We want to empower parents, so we want to do that.

But my first port of call with schools... I hate why questions. Never liked a why question. I always say to them, what is your intent?

What would you like to get from this collaboration? What is the first thing you want to focus on? Most schools will say either one of two things. We want to do this or we don't know.

If they say we want to do this and I have a discussion with them, they realize very quickly that what they want to do is maybe four or five steps ahead of where they are. The first step for me should always start with feedback from your staff, feedback from your students, feedback from your parents. I'm speaking as an ex-teacher, by the way, Shane, and apologies, I've got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, perhaps, when some people hear this. I loved working in schools as a teacher.

What I found difficult sometimes was a staff meeting where you might be told, this is what we're going to do. This is the direction we're going. No discussion has been had with the 90% of the staff who are not privy to those meetings. I feel it's really important that before you even begin, you have a rough idea and then you ask your staff their feedback.

What do you think about where we would like to go? What difficulties are you having when it comes to mental health? Then you create a plan. Leadership teams know this.

It's great when we have conversations with them. They know that the people that are going to implement this are the classroom teachers, are the heads of year, are the subject leads, in terms of, I hate the expression, but the foot soldiers, the ones that see those children eight hours a day. That is what I say to schools. It's great when they come in with plans and ideas, but it is a therapist in me.

I want to go back to the very beginning. I want to know what's led us to this decision. Again, to be frank, to be a little vulgar, I'm not going to sell them things just for the sake of it. Mind you, we want to offer what's right for the school, not what's right for our bank balance.

Today's episode is supported by the Teacher Development Trust. TDT's associate qualification in CPD leadership is so perfect for international school leaders. It's fully accredited and it's delivered online over 10 months. In it, you'll create an actual CPD, that's Continuing Professional Development Strategy, for your school based on research that shows well-planned PD improves pupil outcomes and teacher attention.

And I actually did this program myself. And hands down, it's some of the best professional development I've ever done. So much so that I am delighted to be co-delivering this special Asia cohort, which starts in November. If you want to learn more, go to tdtrust.org

or click the link in the show notes. This episode is supported by the International Curriculum Association. Now, I've been working with the ICA for quite a few years, but they've been around for 30 years and they've been around championing quality, unlocking potential and improving learning in international schools right around the world. I really, really love that at their core is a model for improving learning.

And this model is focused on the learning experience and they have tons of great curriculum materials, PD resources and even an accreditation pathway for schools just like yours. So if you're interested, and I really do recommend you check them out, head over to internationalcurriculum.com. I wonder if you've noticed in mental health, because a lot of people are talking about mental health at the minute, you know, it's one of those topics that comes up.

It does mean that you will have pockets of staff in schools or maybe certain leaders with passions for certain ideas or certain things or certain things they've come across and they for all the right reasons want to just jump into implementing a new strategy. Do you find that a lot when you're kind of going into school? Do they already raring to go on something and you have to kind of pull them back? Absolutely.

Even on Friday at this conference, and I was very fortunate. I had the last speaking spot before the break. Which is great because you've got them, even though they're thinking about their coffee and their tea and their biscuits, all that, I've got no time. And we must have three or four people came to us afterwards.

I want to do this. I'm going to do that. And it was so enthusiastic. And it was that kind of verbal almost putting my hands on their shoulders and just getting them to take a few deep breaths and say, okay, let's start with one thing first.

And then we build on that. I don't know about you, Shane. Speaking as, again, as an ex-teacher, I'd rather have a group of students who are exuberant and energetic and we have to work on them to take things a bit slower than a student or young person who has got no energy and no drive and trying to get them up in line with everyone else. Give me a class full of students with too much energy and too much excitement when it comes to the subject than a group that's got no drive for it whatsoever.

So it's always that balance of making them realise short-term goals, mid-term and long-term. Yeah. I'll say this, Shane. I don't think we'll ever kind of catch up when it comes to mental health and wellbeing, not because we're pessimists, but because there's always new things to consider.

There's always new things to work on, for example. Yeah. And it's a learning curve. Yeah, yeah, it really is.

You're totally right. Building on that passion is a good thing when people are working. And I know you've spoken before on the need for somebody or a group of people in the school to be really dedicated to this kind of work. Would you be able to expand on your thoughts around that?

Thank you. That's a nice little segue. I can sell a course a bit now, can't I? You set that up.

There you go. Thank you, Newt. And I'm going to hit it for a home run. So just under two years or so ago, the UK made this announcement and this big push that every school needed a senior mental health lead.

I thought about blooming time, that's fantastic. When it comes to mental health, it's always lumped on one of two people in a school. It's either lumped on the pastoral lead or on the safeguarding lead. And they're busy enough as it is.

And don't get me started on DSLs also being head of pastoral. That makes no sense to me, but I won't sidetrack. So while I'd like to do this senior mental health lead training, I wonder what it's about. And so the UK offers a spot to every school.

Every school must have one minimum. Theirs was 20 hours. It's based on these eight kind of, again, pillars, these foundations of how to tackle mental health and wellbeing. And I thought, okay, that's fantastic.

It simplifies things. So eight lots of two and a half hours on Zoom. And I reached out to a very good friend of mine, and they've become a very good friend because I've worked with their school a lot. And it's Hailey Wilson, who's the DSL at Kelet in Hong Kong, very, very well-known school.

And I asked Hailey, phenomenally experienced, well-trained, educated when it comes to mental health and wellbeing. She's got a master's in mental health and education. And I said to her, look, any chance you would like to deliver a version for the international settings? And this is what Hailey is like, the most enthusiastic professional you'll ever meet.

One of those people who you just know would be doing what she does even without job title. You know, it's so genuine from her. She came back with a massive amount of information. This is how we could do it, blah, blah, all of these sort of things.

And so we created the Senior Mental Health Lead, and we've added international settings because things are a bit different in the international sector compared to a local UK school. I think we've run three now, maybe four. It's been a bit of a blur, won't lie. And we've done it in an association with a few school memberships, if I can say them, COBIS, FIBICIA, BSME.

However, it's open to everyone. It doesn't matter if you're a member of any of those organizations. It's open to anyone, as you refer to, who has a passion for this. And we do over eight Zoom calls, two and a half hours over each pillar.

And what I love, in fact, I just gave out the certificate on Friday because loads of people who were on our most recent course in the Middle East were at the conference. It's about sharing already good practice and then getting some tips and opportunities to consider what else you could be doing. And the fact is, there's nothing quite as isolating than being in leadership in schools. So when you've got 15 people from 15 different schools, or perhaps a couple from a school at a time, coming together on a Zoom call, it's kind of kindred spirit.

It's an opportunity for people to realize, you're not as alone as you realize, you're going through that difficulty so away. And it's always a bit of a cheeky thing. I think they make a WhatsApp group within the first 10 minutes of their first Zoom call together. It's a really nice community form of networking anyway.

But we created it just under two years ago. You know, Haley runs it on behalf of Mindy Elf. It's not an association with her school, but it just shows, if I can say this, that at Mindy Elf, we really do get the best people in to deliver the training because at the end of the day, teachers want to be trained by people who are living and breathing what they're teaching. Yes. And what kind of things

would those leads in schools actually end up doing? What kind of things would you want them doing in schools? Or if you were establishing that role? Well, again, it's such a new role, Shane.

It's such a new thing to look at. I do believe in the next five years, first of all, I feel there'll be just a job application for it in schools. I think it will be its own separate thing, which is obviously fantastic to take things away from the pastoral lead, the DSL. You know, this should be its own separate thing.

But again, it's really catered to the individual school. So I'll just refer to the eight pillars. You know, so one of them is how do you enable student voice to influence decisions? Well, that very much depends on if you're a primary school or a senior school.

We have one around and we didn't create these pillars, by the way. People think it's a bit cheeky. But one in particular about how do you develop staff? Where's your staff CPD so that we can continue to identify the needs of students?

How do we monitor the needs of students? How do we monitor the impact of interventions? How do you work with the parents and carers? How do you target appropriate referrals?

So there's loads here. A big one for me, though, is curriculum. I was an academic teacher. I was a Latin teacher, of all things.

I loved being in that classroom. I don't care how academic a teacher you are. You have such an influence on their wellbeing. You just don't realize it for the most part.

But again, the biggest form of intervention is prevention. Shane, you and I are of the same generation. We did not have mental health in our curriculum. I think we had a half hour chat just before we went to uni.

And I love my school. And I go back same time every year. I work with them same time every year. And I always speak about it with my ex-teachers.

And they're a bit embarrassed, a bit sheepish that we weren't taught this. And my stance with them was 20 years ago. We didn't discuss this. It really depends on your school.

Being really blunt depends on your budget. There's eight pillars to tackle. For me, I always say find one pillar and start with that. Just one.

Yeah. Would you say if a school is thinking, do you think there is one pillar that would start to unlock others? Or is that entirely personal thing? So just from my own experiences, Shane, just from my own experiences, for me, you enable student voice.

So the title, the actual title for the pillar is enabling student voice to influence decisions. Now, the middle cog, as it were, is all about leadership and management. How do we champion efforts? But I know this is cheesy, but the voice of the children is the most important thing in the school.

My favorite thing when I go into a school, Shane, I love working with the staff. I love working with the parents. I love working. But my favorite thing is whenever I work with the kids.

I know that's cheesy, but when I go into a school and I've got a bunch of year 13s who are going to university and they've wanted to do mental health first aid and we're there for a day, I'm sitting in with them for a day and we're just having chats around mental health. All I can think is these children are more eloquent and more emotionally intelligent than I ever was at their age. I would love to work with them every day of the week because they do have good ideas. Some of their ideas aren't possible, but if they're the ones struggling with these things, what do most children do? They cover up.

They hide it from us. If we give them an opportunity to actually voice their concerns, I guarantee this, by the way, Shane, most things that they've got difficulties with, we could sort these things out straight away and it all just comes from giving them a forum, a space to be heard. As you're saying that, it feels very timely and relevant at the time we're recording at least because a lot of people have been questioning recently through many different world events or through that Netflix drama adolescence, which I'm sure everyone's talking to you about, but just about are we listening to the children enough? Do we understand their world in the way we think we understand it?

I love that your starting point seems to be a lot about their voice and listening to them. Something which has to be really stated as well, here's another little flog, is from our Counseling Skills Training, which is you've got to be comfortable in the uncomfortable and by that I mean is listen to all student voices as well because there are some students' voices and opinions which maybe will tackle our own belief systems and our own morality and what we think is right. We must provide that empathy. Again, that TV show, I feel there's not been much opportunity for dialogue between the disenfranchised as well in regards to all of this.

So again, I'm speaking as a therapist. You're a coach yourself, Shane. We cannot underplay the importance of simply being heard. We don't need to agree and students understand that.

Actually, I just want to be heard, sir. I've asked students in the past what's your favorite character trait from teachers? And there's a few. They want them to be kind on all of this, but actually the few they want, they want it to be empathetic.

They want them to be consistent. And the last one is the most important. They want us to be fair with them. They want us to be fair, but they don't realize the word is fair until they explore it a bit more.

My favorite teachers at school weren't the ones that knew everything about the subject. That was a given. It was actually the ones I realized that were actually really consistent and always willing. And that's 20 years ago, Shane.

And we weren't talking about mental and wellbeing. We're in a society now where we do. It all comes down to the students. That's what a school comprises of.

It's about these children. We need to hear them. We don't need to agree, but they need to be heard first and foremost. I really appreciated George's honest approach to this topic.

That three pillars framework, it really gives us something concrete to work with. But I really like his main emphasis on status symbol, not doing everything at once, but picking one pillar and going from there. And you know that post-vention concept? It really got me thinking too.

We spent so much time on prevention and we're getting better at intervention, but what happens after? How do we welcome someone back? What do we say? These are really useful skills for any leader to have.

And you know, George is absolutely right about student voice being the starting point. If we try to solve problems without actually listening to the people experiencing them, well, we're probably solving the wrong things entirely. If you want to connect with George or learn about Mind Your Health, the links are in the show notes. They're doing some fascinating work and it's worth checking out if this conversation resonated.

Education Leaders is hosted by me, Shane Leaning, thanks to the show editor, Pete McGill, and for the original music by Guillerme Silva. And thank you so much for tuning in today. If we don't speak before, as ever, I'll see you here next week. If you want to learn more about the brilliant work of the Teacher Development Trust and the International Curriculum Association, you can find them using the links in the show notes.