Making Children's Mental Health Week More Than a Poster Display

Place2Be's Children's Mental Health Week reaches millions of pupils each February. But too often, schools treat it as a display exercise — bunting goes up, an assembly happens, and by half-term it's back to normal. Here's how to make it genuinely transformative.

Children's mental health isn't a topic you can cover in a week and move on. But a well-planned Mental Health Week can be the catalyst that embeds wellbeing into your school's daily culture — if you approach it as the beginning of a conversation, not the whole thing.

Start with Staff Wellbeing

This might seem counterintuitive, but the most effective children's mental health programmes start with adults. If your staff team is stretched, stressed, and running on empty, the messages you deliver during the week will ring hollow. Before planning pupil activities, ask: what does our staff need? A brief check-in. A simplified marking week. An honest conversation about workload.

Children are remarkably perceptive. They can tell when adults are modelling the behaviour they're teaching — and when they're not.

Practical Ideas by Year Group

EYFS and Year 1: Naming Feelings

Young children often experience emotions as a physical sensation before they can name them. Use body outlines to map where feelings live: when I'm angry, my tummy feels tight; when I'm excited, my chest feels buzzy. Build a class feelings vocabulary wall that stays up all year — not just during the week.

Read picture books about emotions and create worry boxes for each classroom. The key message at this age: all feelings are okay, and there's always someone to talk to.

Years 2 and 3: Coping Strategies

Move beyond naming feelings to managing them. Teach simple breathing techniques — "smell the flowers, blow out the candles" works brilliantly for this age group. Create personal calm kits with sensory items children choose themselves. Introduce the concept that different strategies work for different people — there's no single right way to feel better.

Create a class "Menu of Calm" — a displayed list of strategies children have tried and recommend to each other. This builds ownership and peer support that lasts well beyond the week.

Years 4 and 5: Understanding Mental Health

At this stage, children can begin to understand that mental health exists on a spectrum, just like physical health. Use an analogy they know: just as everyone sometimes gets a cold, everyone sometimes feels anxious or sad. That's normal. What matters is knowing when to ask for help and who to ask.

Discuss the difference between everyday worries and persistent distress. Use scenarios: "Maya has felt worried about school every morning for three weeks. What might help?" This develops empathy and problem-solving without requiring children to disclose personal experiences.

Year 6: Mental Health Champions

Train Year 6 pupils as Mental Health Champions or Wellbeing Ambassadors. They can run lunchtime check-in sessions for younger children, create wellbeing content for the school newsletter, and model help-seeking behaviour. Research consistently shows that peer support is one of the most effective interventions for children's wellbeing — and it builds leadership skills simultaneously.

Making It Last Beyond the Week

The biggest mistake schools make is treating Mental Health Week as a standalone event. The most impactful schools use it to launch initiatives that continue throughout the year. A daily feelings check-in that starts during the week and continues every morning. A "Wellbeing Wednesday" that becomes a fixture. A worry box that's always available, not just in February.

Build it into your existing structures. PSHE already covers emotional wellbeing — use Mental Health Week to enhance what you're doing, not create parallel work.

The Curriculum Connection

The 2024 Curriculum Review strengthened the requirement for schools to address children's social and emotional development. From 2028, personal wellbeing becomes a more prominent statutory element. Schools that build strong whole-school approaches to mental health now won't need to retrofit later — they'll already have the culture, the resources, and the staff confidence in place.

The goal isn't to make children happy all the time. It's to give them the language, strategies, and confidence to navigate whatever they feel.

Bring It to Life with a Workshop

If you're planning provision against the statutory PSHE Health Education framework, our primary school mental health workshops guide explains what good provision looks like and how to demonstrate it for governors and inspectors.

Our Look After Their Mind workshop gives children practical tools for understanding and managing their emotions — from breathing techniques to building personal wellbeing plans. Designed for EYFS to Year 6 with age-appropriate activities that complement your Mental Health Week programme and create lasting impact.