We would like to use the opportunity to thank all the participating members, the educational community including teachers and school managers, the families and adolescents for their contribution to the UPRIGHT project. ALL OF YOU MAKE UPRIGHT POSSIBLE.
We are really grateful for your participation and welcoming attitude towards the project “We have gained a common language” is among the quotes we got from parents after the first wave of the project and another one is “It is a programme that widens your perspective”. Comments like these encourage us in continuing and we look forward to the second school year of UPRIGHT.
In this first newsletter, we would like to draw attention to the first 18 months of the project. A lot of things have happened since our kick-off meeting took place in Bilbao, Spain in January 2018.
Working with resilience is important for adolescents in order to cope with adverse situations and maintain good mental health. UPRIGHT is a co-created innovative whole school approach including adolescents, their families and the school community in creating a culture of positive mental health by enhancing resilience skills. “A programme to increase resilience and mental well-being is really needed at schools”, school manager.
Adolescence is a crucial period for laying the foundations for healthy development and mental well-being in adulthood. Adolescents experience pressure to be successful in life and preventive interventions at schools are essential to face the increasing prevalence of mental disorders among adolescents.
UPRIGHT will help to extend the knowledge on how mental health is at schools, focusing on adolescents, their teachers and families. The efficacy of UPRIGHT programme will be evaluated from different perspectives: mental health, resilience, well-being and quality of life. Students, teachers and families give their responses by completing questionnaires. Responses will be maintained confidential.
The training has been an overall success and well received by teachers, students and overall professionals from schools. The participation of teachers and school staff was very high in all pilot sites, achieving a total number of 290 teachers trained in the first implementation wave. They were truly motivated and positive towards the training and programme and we look forward to the work ahead. “Upright gives solutions for difficult situations in school” and “The programme gives a feeling of security” are among quotes from school staff we´ve received after the programme training in our pilot sites.
The word is spreading and we have been receiving requests from schools whether they can implement the UPRIGHT intervention. Despite that it is not possible at this moment to include further schools, due to be a randomized project still under evaluation; hopefully and once its effectiveness has been proven the programme will be available free for all schools to use.
The piloting of the programme in the five pilot sites started last school year 2018-19. Since then, we have created an UPRIGHT family with more than 2,200 adolescents and 1,800 families involved! Nevertheless, we still need further effort from families this school year 2019-2020 to reach our target of 6,000 adolescents and 6,000 families. Therefore we call for families and their adolescents to participate by answering the questionnaires.
Control schools (those not getting the UPRIGHT programme) are essential in the evaluation of the Project. In high-quality research studies, where the main task is to find out if an intervention – in this case promoting well-being and resilience through the school – compared to no intervention makes a positive difference, having control schools is crucial and a social benefit. These data will help the scientific community and governments to make decisions about whether the programme has an impact and may be useful to create a positive mental health culture in schools.
Well-being for ALL phase (the school year 2019-20), including activities in the schools where all school staff, children and adolescents, their families, neighbours and the community are invited to participate. The aim is to create a culture of well-being. Both control and intervention schools will be asked to respond to a questionnaire at the end of the school year (May-June 2020).
Well-being for US in the second wave (the school year 2019-20), adolescents from the <> and their families will be invited to participate in the training of the UPRIGHT programme. Both control and intervention schools will be asked to respond to a questionnaire at two-time points within the school year (Oct-Nov 2019 and May-June 2020).
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