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Supporting children's mental health and wellbeing
Supporting children's mental health and wellbeing

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

Supporting children's mental health and wellbeing

Introduction and guidance

This free badged course, Supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing, lasts 24 hours and is comprised of eight sessions. You can work through the course at your own pace, so if you have more time one week there is no problem with pushing on to complete a further study session. The eight sessions are linked to ensure a logical flow through the course. They are:

  1. Setting the scene by looking at the past
  2. Increasing your knowledge of mental health
  3. Mental health promotion and education
  4. A global view of children’s mental health and wellbeing
  5. Wellbeing and mental health in education settings
  6. Professional support for children and their mental health
  7. Exploring some of the interventions to support children’s mental health
  8. The influence of screen time on young children’s mental health and wellbeing

Each session should take you around 3 hours. There are a number of activities throughout the course where you are asked to note down your response. A text box is provided for you to do this, however if you would prefer to record your answers in another way that is fine.

At the end of each session there is also a quiz to help you check your understanding. And, if you want to receive a formal statement of participation, at the end of Sessions 4 and 8 there is a quiz which you need to pass.

After completing this course, you should be able to:

  • understand the influences on mental health in young children age 0–5
  • identify the factors that contribute to good mental health in children
  • explore national and global influences on children’s mental health
  • develop knowledge about strategies and interventions to improve mental health in children
  • examine how adults and society can support children’s mental health and wellbeing.

Moving around the course

In the ‘Summary’ at the end of each session, you will find a link to the next session. If at any time you want to return to the start of the course, click on ‘Full course description’. From here you can navigate to any part of the course.

It’s also good practice, if you access a link from within a course page (including links to the quizzes), to open it in a new window or tab. That way you can easily return to where you’ve come from without having to use the back button on your browser.

The Open University would really appreciate a few minutes of your time to tell us about yourself and your expectations for the course before you begin, in our optional start-of-course survey [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] . Participation will be completely confidential and we will not pass on your details to others.