The HeadStart Learning Programme

Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people: the role of HeadStart.

HeadStart areas have been successful in collecting a huge volume of data about student wellbeing using questionnaires. This is key to our aim to build evidence about what works and what doesn’t, and to share learning to benefit young people in future. Achieving this is no mean feat. This case study shares our learning about how to get a good response rate when using surveys to measure wellbeing in schools.

HeadStart Newham worked to develop a user friendly report for schools and community providers to see the progress of their young people following interventions. The reports were designed for a range of stakeholders including schools, delivery staff and the service leads, to assess whether the interventions meet the needs of young people and the service.

Cornwall case study on data linkage.

A review of what has been learnt from the Partnerships engagement in their evaluation and research work strands.

Cross-partnership case study looking at the ways schools have used WMF data to change their practice.

In this case study we do not outline the findings of the evaluation work; these can be found by following the links at the end. Instead, this report outlines the challenges associated with an evaluation of Bloom, the process that HeadStart Kernow developed and implemented, and the key learning gained from undertaking this work.

In this first briefing, we look at data on which protective factors and outcomes the six HeadStart partnerships are focusing on.

This briefing looks at the various interventions that have been put in place by HeadStart for young people ages 10-16.

This briefing looks at how HeadStart is helping to change the systems used to support children and young people on their mental health and wellbeing journey.

This report delves into HeadStart's research on the coping strategies young people use to cope with challenging times and their views on the support they receive.

This briefing draws on the learnings taken from the HeadStart Learning 2020 Conference, including discussions of young people's views on how mental health issues differ between genders.

In this briefing, we aim to illustrate the range of targeted interventions offered by six local authority led partnerships through the HeadStart programme. We also investigate whether these interventions reached young people with higher needs in terms of their mental health and wellbeing.

This briefing focuses on HeadStart research the examines the similarities and differences in the factors that influence mental health problems for children and young people and the factors influencing their wellbeing.

The briefing offers up the implications and recommendations from HeadStart's survey on the mental health of young people aged 11 to 14.

T1 longitudinal study (partial) dataset: Young people's experiences of HeadStart, problems in life and their coping strategies/sources of support.

Public facing summary of ‘Mental health and academic outputs’ looks at the relationship between mental health, attainment and attendance, using baseline data.

This study aimed to evaluate Team Social Action (TSA), which is a targeted intervention run in schools by Headstart Newham. Strand 1 employed a waitlist randomised controlled trial (RCT) and strand 2 involved qualitative interviews with pupils and staff, to evaluate whether TSA had a positive and significant impact on young people’s wellbeing, school connection, and peer support.

Learning update on whole school approaches and checklist for schools to use.

T1 and T2 longitudinal study dataset: Young people's experiences of HeadStart, and risk and protective factors.

This report examines the changing mental health and wellbeing of children and young people from early to mid-adolescence.

Summative evidence briefing on peer mentoring/More Than Mentors in Newham.

A study exploring HeadStart school staff members' experiences of the implementation of HeadStart and perceptions of impact at their school.

Staff perspectives on HeadStart delivery during the COVID-19 period.

Summative evidence briefing on the Bounce Back intervention, delivered in HeadStart Newham. Looking at promising impact of the intervention.

Briefing drawing on pre-pandemic quantitative survey data, looking at the association between supportive relationships at school and mental health and well-being (most of our other coronavirus-related resources have focused on support from partnerships or families).

This report presents the views of young people on their experiences of HeadStart based on interviews with them conducted over the six years the programme has been running.

This briefing will direct attention to different models of participation that currently exist within various systems of care and support. It is important to note that while many more participation models exist, the focus of this briefing is on those that make a clear distinction between categories of involvement and differentiate between the roles of providers (e.g., programme staff) and service users (e.g., young people) within their models.

This study was funded through the Children and Families Policy Research Unit by the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme.

This study was funded through the Children and Families Policy Research Unit by the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme.

This booklet is about our research on the mental health and wellbeing of girls and boys, aged 11-14.

We wanted to find out whether young people’s experiences of difficulties in their lives, and the support they received to cope with these difficulties, had changed during the first two years of HeadStart. We spoke to 78 young people at two separate times. We first spoke to them in 2017/18, and we interviewed the same young people again in 2018/19. Doing this meant that we could see what may have changed for these young people between the first and second time we interviewed them.

We wanted to find out how young people handle problems and difficult situations in their lives. We spoke to 63 young people who had either received support from HeadStart or could receive it in the future.

This report presents views and learnings on the impact of HeadStart, based on research interviews conducted with staff members of each partnership after the first year of the programme.