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Using health and well-being data to support improvements in mental health in schools
Welcome to the SHINE January 2025 Newsletter
- Happy New Year!
- A warm welcome to a new member of the SHINE team
- The SHINE mental health survey & the UNCRC
- New funding from Research Data Scotland for SHINE & Generation Scotland
- Update webinar: the Education Scotland Curriculum Improvement Cycle for HWB
- Save the date: SHINE National Network Conference 2025
- Visit the Byres Road Community Hub to see the Eyes Wide Open exhibit
- Other research events, resources and opportunities:
- Free resources for school communities on child exploitation, hate crime, substance use and radicalisation
- What are the Top 10 questions about Mental Health, Sleep & the Body Clock?
- Free webinar- Anna Freud - An Introduction to self-harm prevention in schools and colleges
- Seeking a teacher to contribute to a steering group for a research study investigating social networking and tobacco use among young people
Happy New Year to all SHINE members and associates!
We are looking forward to working with you in 2025. This edition of the SHINE newsletter brings news of new opportunities to get involved and join us!
A warm welcome to a new member of the SHINE Team
We are delighted to welcome Dr Samantha Ofili to the SHINE team as a Research Associate. Sam will also be working with Jo Inchley on DATAMIND (the Hub for Mental Health Informatics Research Development). Samantha completed her PhD at the University of Strathclyde, where her research focused on child mental health in educational settings. Sam brings with her a wealth of experience and expertise in mental health statistics from her time working in health and education services.
The SHINE Mental Health Survey and the UNCRC
Rights respecting ethical practice with school HWB surveys
The SHINE Team would like to highlight the importance of the link between upholding the UNCRC legislation and meeting the research ethical approval requirements when using a health and wellbeing survey with young people in the school setting. The four UNCRC articles above are particularly important to us:
Article 5: Supporting parents/carers to guide their children so that as they grow up they understand how to use their rights in the best way. With the SHINE Mental Health survey, we ask schools to issue the parents/carer and pupils information sheets at least 2 weeks before the young people complete the survey. This is so that parents/carers have the opportunity to ask questions and speak to their children about what they are being invited to do. This is an essential requirement of the ethical approval granted to SHINE members to use the survey.
Articles 12 and 13: The SHINE mental health survey has been specifically designed to amplify Pupil Voice and involve the wider school community in improvement planning for health and wellbeing. The data reports produced for participating schools and Local Authorities are designed to be shared with the participating young people, their parents/carers as well as teaching staff and community partners. Supporting the understanding of the young people's HWB context and enabling them to have a voice in the decision-making process for HWB improvement planning is central to the ethos of the SHINE MHWB survey, so that children can be represented and listened to in this priority area.
Article 16: The SHINE research team operates to the highest standards of data protection to keep the data of participating young people safe. No names are asked for when completing the survey. Schools are given a unique ID code so that the school name is not in the dataset. Dates of birth and postcodes, if provided, are converted to age and SIMD before being stripped off the stored dataset so that no individual could be recognised. The data reports only report the results for year group and gender as long as the minimum number requirements are met. The purpose of the data reports is for the wider school community to understand the health and wellbeing environment that the young people experience at school, so that priorities for improvement and strengths can be identified with a view to supporting the best interests of the young people.
New funding from Research Data Scotland for SHINE & Generation Scotland
SHINE and Generation Scotland have been working in partnership to develop a suite of resources for schools to explain what is big data, how does data linkage work and why research data ethics are so important. We are delighted to be one of 5 projects to receive funding from Research Data Scotland to improve the design, and broaden the range of accessibility and relevance for young people and schools. The aim is to improve engagement with the lesson plans in order to reach a wider audience with maximum impact, ensuring a good understanding of health research methods.
Update webinar on the Education Scotland HWB Curriculum Improvement Cycle
The SHINE Network Manager, Dawn Haughton, is delighted to have been invited to join the Education Scotland HWB Curriculum Improvement Cycle Steering Group which will oversee the governance structure of the Curriculum Improvement Cycle for HWB.
A webinar delivered by Education Scotland on the Curriculum Improvement Cycle has been shared and can be viewed here by clicking on the link provided. This is part of a series of three webinars aimed at sharing the process more widely with stakeholders and partners.
SHINE Conference 2025: save the date!
The SHINE conference for 2025 will take place at the School of Health & Wellbeing on Thursday 15th May 2025. The draft programme contains:
- The HWB context for young people related to smartphone and social media use
- Findings from different sleep research projects to showcase school-based research and useful knowledge for schools
- School case studies
- An update on the progress of the ABSAIL project (Addressing Barriers to School Attendance to Improve Long-term Outcomes)
- New resources to support schools to mitigate young people's anxiety and negative thoughts which lead to social and academic non-engagement
Visit the Byres Road Community Hub to see the Eyes Wide Open exhibit
Eyes Wide Open Sleep Study
Byres Road Community Hub Exhibit
Jan & Feb 2025
The Eyes Wide Open exhibition is a research project conducted by Catriona Ewart who worked with adolescents, parents and teachers from three schools across Scotland to understand the barriers and facilitators to healthy adolescent sleep. The project involved using Photovoice, an arts-based approach, where adolescents explored how the world around them shapes their sleep and captured their experiences through photography. Adolescents then discussed their ideas in a group workshop, individual interviews, story writing, and a school exhibition attended by friends and family. These insights will be used to inform the development of intervention strategies to improve sleep among adolescents in Scotland. The Eyes Wide Open exhibit is open to the public and provides an opportunity for the community to learn about sleep from an adolescent-led perspective, share ideas and engage in meaningful discussions about strategies for healthy sleep for people of all ages.
Catriona is still recruiting parents/carers to take part in an interview to understand their experience of sleep during the teen years. If you or someone you know is interested in sharing their perspective, please sign up here or contact Catriona at c.ewart.1@research.gla.ac.uk.
Other research events, resources and opportunities for schools
I AM ME Scotland Learning platform - free resources for school communities
I Am Me Scotland is an award-winning charity that was developed to work in partnership with Police Scotland to raise awareness of, and tackle, Disability Hate Crime. The charity has two key initiatives; Keep Safe and I Am Me. Since then, the charity has gone on to develop a series of excellent videos and animations to tackle substance use (including vaping), gangs, radicalisation and child exploitation.
The SHINE Network Manager was delighted to attend the launch of the new "You Are Not Alone" resources at Paisley Town Hall on 29th January. These resources have been developed with young people from St Mary’s Kenmure, Good Shepherd, Polmont and with young people who have Care Experience. The resources are designed for non-mainstream education, though will be available for use by any teacher/practitioner across Scotland
All resources are free and can be accessed by registering for the Education Platform. Register for Access : I Am Me Scotland Learning Platform. The National Education Platform Guidebook gives a great overview of what’s in the platform. It’s interactive too, so if you click on the pictures of the animations/videos and it will take you to the YouTube channel.
In 2024, the Circadian Mental Health Network, based at Edinburgh University, asked people: "What do you want to know about mental health, sleep and the body clock?". They were inundated with questions from young people, people with lived experience of mental health conditions, people with lived experience of sleep and body clock disruptions, healthcare workers, carers and other members of the public. Now they need help to find out which of these questions are the most important. and have launched a new Mental Health and the Body Clock survey. This will allow people to choose the 10 questions that are most important to them, and that they want future research to focus on.
What questions are most important to you about mental health, sleep and the body clock? If you are a person with lived experience, clinician, healthcare worker, carer, or support for someone with lived experience (family, friend), they would love to know your top 10s.
You can find the survey here: https://edinburgh.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7P9EO2VGRjMQmAm
An introduction to self-harm prevention in schools and colleges
Free Webinar
The Anna Freud Centre is hosting a free webinar on 4th February 2025 from 16.30 to 18.00 to provide an overview of two brand new training courses “Responding to a young person who is self-harming” and “Self-harm: Leading whole-school prevention.” This webinar is for any education professional who is working directly with young people who may be at risk of, or who they are aware are, self-harming.
"How do peers influence adolescent health behaviour? Using social network analysis to understand mechanisms in peer-led interventions."
The Scottish Graduate School and Medical Research Council have launched a three-year studentship project focusing on school-based interventions to address adolescent tobacco problem behaviours.
The interdisciplinary team at the University of Glasgow, under the supervision of Dr. Emily Long aims to unpack for whom and under what circumstances opinion leaders may shape behaviour change amongst their peers. Key to the project is an advisory group made up of a diverse mix of people from public sector, education and public health researchers.
We are seeking a teacher to participate in 3 (1 hour) insightful sessions over the course of the studentship (2025-27) and contribute to the discussion on enhancing tobacco-free programmes. Stakeholders are welcome to join these sessions in-person, with the option for the meetings to be hybrid. Please contact e.omiridou.1@research.gla.ac.uk with any queries and/or to register interest.
All the best,
The SHINE Team
Dawn Haughton
Schools Health and Wellbeing Improvement Research Network (SHINE) Manager
E-mail: Dawn.Haughton@glasgow.ac.uk
Web: www.gla.ac.uk/shine
Twitter: @ScotlandSHINE
