Cowes students deliver enterprising ideas

Students at Cowes Enterprise have been awarded a £2,000 cheque for their ideas to improve wellbeing, co-ordinated by the ‘Wellbeing mentors’ as part of the #BeeWell project.

Students came up with the idea to improve a sense of connection and wellbeing at the school. Wellbeing Warriors, or Mentors, are an appointed wellbeing committee who meets weekly to consider students mental health and wellbeing priorities. Wellbeing Warriors have since come together independently of staff to produce the winning action plan.

Over 22,000 young people across Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton (HIPS) in Years 8 & 10 took part in the BeeWell project in autumn 2023.

Cowes Enterprise were one of 103 schools who took part in the HIPS area, of which 19 were special schools. Nine schools across the Island were involved, two of which were special schools, (over 1400 young people).

The inspiration behind the student’s concept was an interest in Owen Eastwood’s work on belonging. They have adopted his model of ‘whakapapa’ (creating environments where individuals feel connected to each other, their community, and their history).

The Wellbeing Warriors team are thrilled to have been awarded this cheque, and the prize money will go towards making their plans a reality, with the money being spent on,

Guest speaker and resources for the festival

Cost of 20 hoodies

Materials for the club

Furniture/decoration of the sensory room

Cost of mental health first aid training

The project was judged by groups of similar aged students and the panel said that the Cowes Enterprise team concept was ‘The Best!’ and they loved the idea of having a whole school celebration for wellbeing.

Cllr Jonathan Bacon, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services and Education said ‘’It’s wonderful to see so many of our young people engaged in this issue. The fact that this project was focused on reaching out and being visible to those who are vulnerable and need help is wonderful. Children can at times struggle to communicate how they feel to the adults around them, but they feel more comfortable talking to their peers. The idea of children supporting children gives great hope for the future and I look forward to seeing plans put in to action in the coming school year.’’

Ashley Whittaker, Strategic Director for Children’s Services added ‘’the #BeeWell project has produced some really interesting information and we have collected a lot of useful feedback and data from the students. This will help us, as a local authority, and also teachers, to continue to grow and work alongside the children.’’

Summary of survey results

The results of the survey were split into neighbourhood-level The HIPS (Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton) region has been split into 46 neighbourhoods. The Isle of Wight made up four of these, Cowes, Newport/ West Wight, Ryde and Shanklin/ Sandown. The neighbourhood dashboard can be accessed here. 

Overall wellbeing, across HIPS, key life satisfaction and mental wellbeing scores seem consistent with other large studies that have used one or more of the measures included in the #BeeWell survey.

Island young people are not discernibly different to the average, however young people in our area have shown a marginally lower score for self-esteem compared to the HIPS average.

The #BeeWell survey provides data on a range of domains and drivers linked to wellbeing.

Overall, a slightly higher proportion of young people in IoW report feeling lonely ‘often’ or ‘always’: 11.5% Island young people have told the project they attribute high rates of loneliness to being isolated on an island, but this issue is also recognisable at the regional level. They attribute general loneliness among young people on the Island to:

Social media

Not having enough local free activities on the weekends

People not wanting to do things after school because:

When it comes to talking about mental health, across HIPS, when asked if they feel comfortable talking to adults about their mental health, 29.5% agree they do feel comfortable. For the Island, this is lower in the Cowes area at 24% and highest in the Ryde area at 33%.

When asked about feeling safe, Isle of Wight young people rate higher than the HIPS average of 84.2%, with 86% reporting that they feel fairly safe or very safe in their local area.

This varies across neighbourhoods:

Ryde - 88%

Newport and West Wight - 87%

Sandown and Shanklin - 85.4%

Cowes - 84.5%

The #BeeWell programme is currently funded for three years and using the findings, collaborative work such as that evidenced by Cowes Enterprise College will continue between the local authority, community partners, schools and students to improve wellbeing.