In January 2015 Minsters Jan O’Sullivan and Kathleen Lynch jointly launched “Well-Being in Primary Schools – Guidelines for Mental Health Promotion”. This was the result of a joint collaboration between the Department of Education and Skills and the Health Service Executive, with the aim of promoting mental health and well-being in primary schools.

It is recognised in these guidelines that positive mental health and well-being enables young people to lead fulfilling lives. Home and family are recognised as the primary source of nurturing and support for children. However, mental health and well-being are recognised as everyone’s concern and involves the whole school community, parents/guardians and others involved in day to day school life. Positive mental health for children is part of their overall health and is inextricably linked with well-being.

In order to promote positive mental health and well-being at CBS Kilkenny; we have decided to take part in the Amber Flag Initiative. This involves the whole school community coming together in other to create a safe, positive and healthy attitude towards our general physical and mental health and well-being.

This September we were awarded our third Amber Flag. The boys worked so hard promoting our theme ‘Your Food is your Mood.’

This year our new team will be looking to go bigger and better to create awareness and promote positive mental health for our school community!

Our Amber flag student representatives developed our Mission Statement:

• Provide information to others on what mental health means.
• To provide information on what activities can help and where to go for help.
• To help our school be a place where everybody, no matter how different we all are, feels safe and has lots of fun learning.

We would really welcome any ideas and suggestions you may have which could be incorporated. Likewise, if any parent is willing to share their skills and talents with us in terms of creative art, music, meditation, mindfulness, fitness, healthy eating, etc. please let one of the teachers know. We acknowledge and appreciate the knowledge and skills you all have which may help us create a positive mental health and well-being environment here at CBS Kilkenny!