Mental Health in Bassetlaw: Our poster and key rings are now available!

Within the North Nottinghamshire area there is a wide range of help available for anyone who needs support. However, it is not always easy to know who is out there and how to find them, especially when it comes to children and young people.

You Before Two and the Bassetlaw Place Based Partnership (BPBP) have teamed up to design and produce posters and key rings as a quick and easy way to locate different organisations, locally and nationally that can be accessed for support. The money for this project was secured through a successful grant application to the Bassetlaw CCG Small Grants Scheme to ‘Support Men’s Mental Health- Suicide Prevention.’ (NB: Our posters are for all ages and genders).

Asking for help can be one of the hardest steps, especially as a young person, so we have put together this poster that can be downloaded and printed off and also links to the QR code on key rings that are being given out for free in local secondary schools.

You may need support on sexual health, mental health, eating disorders, bereavement, suicide, self-harming, homelessness or just need someone to talk to.

Everything is covered here! However, if you still do not know where to start, please contact your local GP or speak to a trusted adult.

If there are any more contacts that you would like to be added to this contacts poster in the next issue, please contact us at info@youbeforetwo.co.uk.

https://youbeforetwo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/18565-You-Before-Two-Mental-Health-Bassetlaw-Poster-Revised-Version.pdf

That together thing

Hello 2022. Hello you.

Still remote. Mute? Frozen? Oh no, we are just so skilled now with that coordinated action of camera and microphone, like some kind of new breed of zoomie wizards. I’m 14 days in and no talk whatsoever of ‘seeing me but not hearing me’ or vice versa. Dare I say it, we are pros at this and have decided that two years of a new ‘thing’ automatically entrenches it into our every ‘thing.’

Shall I tell you what I’ve learnt? Go on, humour me? Yep, that together thing. All warm and squidgy and dare I say a tad earnest. But my oh my, going it alone, in virtually anything nowadays, is pretty horrifying. Grab yourself an emotionally intelligent friend, family member or colleague and life starts to creak itself out of almost any trauma. After all, how good do we know we really are without asking someone? The chances are we aren’t going to give an accurate description of ourselves, to ourselves. But someone else? Someone else can see us, hear us, help us and you never know….join us?

Having recently read the utterly captivating book ‘The Choice,’ by Edith Eger, where another soul, or belief in another soul, can salvage hope when all of life appears hopeless, I am reminded of the human spirit. A reminder of how humans need other humans even when we
don’t believe that to be true. Edith talks about ‘never criticising’ others. ‘Ever.’ Now there’s a thing. To really think about that, every time we speak. Try it. Something extraordinary happens. We are led onto a road where the only paths are friendly. Well what a thing. Delivering bad news, but never actually being bad. This is where humans learn to like each other despite disagreeing. Mmm, novel. I LIKE!

Nothing impresses me more than ambitious young people. Last night I had the privilege of meeting some of the members of our local youth council. An erudite teen chairing her way through an online meeting of mixed ages and sexes, like a knife through butter. We have never owed the stage to young people more than we do now. Time for adults to step out of the way and for the teen-massive to get back to what they do best, being together with their mates, as much as humanly possible. Something we need to aspire to ourselves in adulthood, even if it now feels a bit wrong, or a bit wierd.

As I said, together is better.

 

 

Choice. The only path to change.

I have just been made aware of the brilliant Population Media Center. You want to be inspired, you watch this video. There are no words more meaningful than those spoken towards the end of this short video from Farellia Tahina of UNICEF, ‘you don’t tell them, do this, do that, they choose. They choose what is better to get a better life and create a life change for themselves.’

You want to do something? Sign the Population Matters Manifesto. One signature is one giant moonstep to educating ourselves and our youngsters.

Join our Board?

We currently have vacancies for the following Trustees on our Board.

• Treasurer
  
• Fundraising Lead

If you are over 18 and are interested in taking on a new challenge, read on!

Details and requirements relevant to all our Trustee roles:

We would be delighted to speak further with you.

 

 

HELLO !!!!

Thank you so much for being the first visitors to our new website!!

It has been a spectacularly busy year.

For that, I feel completely blessed. Not a single moment has been wasted on me. Stepping out into one unseasonably balmy evening after the next, following a (very) long day in the office, with colleagues of the actual human form, has made me feel tired, but lucky, when so many other team players have been forced into isolation entirely against their will.

The NHS has risen to the challenge. Just.

The vaccines have proved a previously unimaginable triumph.

But now the real work starts to fix the broken hearts and heads. This will take time and dogged positivity. No amount of NHS alone is going to fix this. It will take extra time, effort and possibly finance from everyone to bring us back from the 2020 full body shock.

Would you be interested in volunteering for You Before Two?

What is a Volunteer?

“…An important expression of citizenship and essential to democracy. It is the commitment of time and energy for the benefit of society and the community and can take many forms. It is undertaken freely and by choice, without concern for financial gain”

The Volunteering Code of Practice

Please contact us if you would like to be part of the work of You Before Two.

Relationships & Sex Education: Teach Everyone Every Aspect

There is little wonder why subjects like RSE (Relationships and Sex Education) have been confined to teachers taking Human Biology lessons, or to those with a particular passion or the confidence to teach a bit of it in PSHE lessons. (However, there is nothing more cringing than the classics teacher having a crack at it – apparently).

The PSHE Association has moved mountains to create a wealth of resources for children (and teachers) at every age and stage. Everything from relationships to sex to contraception to internet safety.

Different schools have taken different sized bites out of the RSE education cake which has often meant a wild variation in the amount of teaching received by children up and down the country. As you can imagine, private schools have had more time and money to provide this education. I refer again to the ‘double trouble’ for those children most at risk of poor outcomes, often being the least well educated in RSE. We were holding out for the new government RSE guidance, that was due to come into play in September 2020, meaning that every secondary school aged child would be required to learn this subject matter. But then covid-19 happened and for the moment, deadlines have been kicked into next year.

Talking today to some students that partook in our sexual consent workshop in 2018 aged 15, who are now aged 17, it smacked me between the eyes just how receptive these youngsters are and how silly we are to dance around them with content that we fear they might be ‘too young’ to appreciate. It is clearly always vital to make the teaching content appropriate to the age and developmental stage of a child, I know that and I’m a Doctor by ‘trade’ not a teacher. But are we too slow on getting this information across? Sophie told me today that being ‘taught this stuff at secondary school is too late, it would have been better to have started it earlier.’ And then went on to question why adults feel ‘it puts it into our heads to be a different sexuality’ if it is taught in schools, which is frankly ‘ridiculous.’ I felt my head shrink back into my neck.

Adults are we listening?!

All agreed that this type of teaching should be compulsory. Katie went on to challenge why, to date, You Before Two have done mostly single sex sessions? I made a feeble attempt to explain that we had come to this conclusion because boys in particular seemed, thus far, to more openly express their views and participate more in a classroom without girls in it. Regan, our only boy in the reunion today sided with Katie remarking that it ‘doesn’t matter on gender, some individuals are just more comfortable talking about this stuff than others.’ And that ‘if we separate boys and girls we are asking for disparity.’

Click here to read my full blog.