St. Michael’s College will give staff training around mental health and suicide after it received a grant from the National Lottery Awards for All.

The Enniskillen school will get £9,600 for the training which will also help teachers share their training with pupils and other members of staff.

The training will be delivered as part of the PIP - Train-the-teacher programme, which is a well recognised and award winning project that has been introduced across a wide range of schools, universities and police forces across the UK.

The project will allow the school to access expert support to develop and build the capacity of staff to address the needs of the school community in relation to the areas of Healthy Minds, Resilience Training and Suicide Prevention.

Joanne O’Neill, Head of Pastoral Care at the College said they were delighted to have received the grant and it will provide excellent training to staff.

“Following an audit of pastoral provision across the school and the views expressed by staff and pupils, the issue of emotional health and well being is a central component of the School Development Plan,” explained Mrs. O’Neill.

“This includes the capacity building of staff in the area of promoting resilience and developing a mentally healthy school. This award, will assist the school in addressing these pressing needs which are so crucial in supporting the development of our young people and building their own capacity to face the challenges of modern day life.”

The training provided by PIPS will include both group and individual work followed by an assessed delivery. Those staff trained as part of this programme will in turn cascade their skills across the school community. The outworking of the training programme will allow the core team of teachers to embark on and assume a leadership role in the school, using the skills they have acquired to help build the resilience of pupils. Staff will assume a proactive leadership role in the development of programmes that will be delivered in the classroom with a focus on building resilience and supporting individual pupils who are experiencing emotional health difficulties.

“Overall, staff of the school will be upskilled in order to better support pupils experiencing emotional difficulties and introduce preventive resilience building programmes in a number of key areas.

“The programmes introduced will build the emotional capacity and resilience of pupils to deal with life challenges.

“It is anticipated that the entire school community of teaching, support staff and pupils will benefit from this programme.

“Most importantly however, it will allow St. Michael’s pupils to access a wide range of practical mechanisms and strategies to help develop, support and promote positive emotional mental health and wellbeing.”