EquiEnergy Youth just completed four weeks delivering our ‘Coach 2 Cope – The Responder Toolkit’ training program to hundreds of educators and professionals that support young people and their mental health. We travelled to a new area each day throughout Hunter New England and up the North Coast of NSW, before finishing in different parts of Northern Sydney. The program was facilitated by EquiEnergy Youth Clinical Director Director Dr Stephen Spencer and focused on;

-Customised training to address the challenges in supporting young people’s mental health.

-Expert guidance on why child and adolescent mental challenges are more prevalent than ever and what you can do to help.

-Be trained in a new approach developed from PhD research project on how to respond ‘in the moment’ to psychological distress and improve mental health outcomes.

-Learn to implement simple individualised calming and support plan (risk management plans) with practical examples on how.

-Gain skills on how to best respond to distress and anxiety and assist young people to develop coping, resilience and positive help seeking behaviours.

-Coaching in the use of scripts and engagement strategies using the TAR3 framework (psychological first aid).

-How culture, leadership and language in regard to mental health impacts mental health outcomes for staff and young people.

-Your own take home Toolkit to guide you and your colleagues in supporting young people in your care.Each participant received the ‘EEYouth Toolkit’ to take back to their organisation to help colleagues develop support plans they learnt how to implement for individual kids with different mental health needs. We were in awe of how dedicated people we met along the way are to helping young people in their care and humbled by the extraordinary attendance and feedback we received. Thank you for having us! We are already planning our next trip to these areas again.