We worked with our partners, The Children’s Society, to undertake an impact assessment in St. Vincent’s Catholic Primary School in Warrrington. A Youth Worker from The Children’s Society, Jenny Foulkes, used Mind Moose with a Year 5 class, and started by using it as a whole class exercise.
The children, aged between 9 and 10, worked with Jenny, completing Mind Moose activities and learning to recognise their good qualities and strengths. The students generally found it very positive, enjoying the music and characters, and being able to change their avatars.
Using the wellbeing assessments in-built into Mind Moose, along with her own professional judgement, Jenny then moved to one-to-one individualised sessions with 8 children that she felt could benefit from further intervention support. “The children were extremely engaged with Mind Moose” Jenny said. The children found the exercises to be a great way to express their feelings. “One child particularly responded well to the intervention session and reported that he was happy that he could share his thoughts,” Jenny said. “It was good because you get to express things that I wouldn’t get to say to other people,” one pupil said.
The Mindfulness section was particularly popular with the children and all the pupils agreed that they really liked this segment and would be eager to use it again. “I enjoyed everything, I will do the mindfulness exercises when I am angry,” one child said. “I learnt not to get too angry with myself,” said another.
Each of the children completed a wellbeing assessment before and after using Mind Moose and the average change was highly positive at over 8 points on the standardised scale, demonstrating that using Mind Moose can have a very positive impact on children’s wellbeing when used as an intervention. This was a small-scale impact study, but demonstrates a highly positive start and we are very grateful to Jenny, The Children’s Society and St. Vincent’s Catholic Primary School (especially the children in Year 5) for their support.
