Royal College of Speech & Language: “Mind Your Words” (children and young people’s mental health) free eLearning
Mind Your Words (children and young people’s mental health) is a free eLearning tool designed for professionals working with children and young people.
- The tool aims to improve understanding of children and young people who have both mental health needs (or social emotional and mental health needs – SEMH) and speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). This is made all the more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, as research suggests it has had an effect on everyone’s mental health, including children.
- The online training highlights the links between mental health and communication and outlines how professionals can work together to remove communication barriers and help these children and young people achieve their potential.
- The course consists of 15 modules, of which the first five apply to all settings. You will need to complete the first five modules, which cover the information we think everyone needs to know to, in order to unlock the other modules. After that you are free to choose which modules you feel are relevant. Information about the modules is attached.
What’s in the eLearning?
Mind Your Words is a series of modules. The first five modules are required, but once you’ve completed these, you can choose as many of the remaining modules as you’d like.
The five core modules explain what speech, language and communication needs are, what social, emotional and mental health needs are, and how to recognise them, as well as how they are interrelated and some general strategies you can put in place.
The remaining modules look in more detail at ways you can support children and young people, including getting support from speech and language therapy, working collaboratively, modifying risk assessment and de-escalation techniques, becoming a communication accessible service and much more.
Read more about the eLearning modules
It can be completed in any order, at your own pace – the modules will save your progress so you do not have to do it all at once.
The course is completely remote, which:
- saves learner’s time away from work (which is often hard to arrange)
- saves learner’s travel costs, compared to attending a face-to-face course
