St Philip’s Christian College Foundation Awarded $50,000 to assist newly-formed student welfare evaluation team

We are pleased to announce that St Philip’s Christian College Foundation has secured a $50,000 grant to develop methods of identifying and responding more effectively to self-harm amongst our students across our group of schools.  The grant is part of a Federal Government initiative, through their regional Primary Health Network, to improve mental health support for individuals. We are thankful for their support in the ongoing processes of application and implementation. 

The grant comes on the back of a year of exploration into how to best support the welfare teams in our College. A Psychologist from Mindinsight Anne Ward, visited with each welfare team to identify some of the key aspects of their current work, and worked with Dr Stephen Fyson from the Foundation Team to plan possible future support. 

The project will be carried out over the next twelve months by our newly-formed project team. The team is made up of Anne Ward (a Christian psychologist with Mindinsight, and part of our Newcastle SPCC community); Dr Sarah Stanford (a Christian Psychologist who did her recent doctoral studies in the prevalence, presentation and response to self-harm in schools), and Dr Stephen Fyson from the SPCC Foundation Office (whose PhD is also in psychology within education).  

The project team will work to develop processes, and referral networks, to support the staff at our schools in the area of self-harm identification and response.  

By the end of the project, we hope to have a resource for any person working in the welfare area of schools, and some parent seminar material to complement this professional development material for staff.