Place2Be at Moray House

All student teachers at Moray House can access mental health expertise through our partnership with Place2Be, a leading children’s mental health charity. 

Through this partnership, a clinician from Place2Be, who is embedded across Moray House, supports student teachers’ development of knowledge, understanding and skills that can be applied in the classroom to identify and support child and adolescent mental health, wellbeing and resilience.

Find out more about Place2Be's wider work in Scotland

All student teachers at Moray House can engage regularly with the Place2Be clinician via “Place2Think”. These are one-to-one and group sessions providing a unique therapeutic and educational space to student teachers. 

In Place2Think, students can reflect on their teaching practice, their pupils' mental health and wellbeing, as well as their own wellbeing. This allows students to build both their skills as a teacher and their own emotional resilience, preparing them for a career in the classroom.

In addition to Place2Think, all students can attend a range of Place2Be learning opportunities (lectures and seminars) where they can gain a stronger theoretical and practical understanding of aspects of child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing. This upskilling helps students to think about how they can support mental health and wellbeing in their classrooms—both the pupils’ and their own. 

The ultimate aim is for student teachers to become champions in the creation of a wider mentally healthy 'whole-school' approach.

Through engagement with Place2Be, our students gain an increased understanding of child and adolescent mental health in the classroom. The partnership also enables student teachers to:

• reflect on their growing teacher identity, developing a greater sense of agency
• understand the impact of their new profession on their own sense of mental health and wellbeing
• process how their own emotions or experiences may impact a given situation, and learn how to best support children and young people and themselves

Ultimately, this leads to teachers who have greater emotional regulation, better self-awareness and increased resilience. They will be able to create classrooms in which children feel safe, emotionally secure, and understood by their teacher.

Place2Be is a children's and young people's mental health charity with almost 30 years' experience working with pupils, families and staff in UK schools. Place2Be is a pioneer in early intervention: providing mental health support in schools through one-to-one and group counselling using tried and tested methods backed by research.

Taking a whole-school approach, Place2Be also provide mental health training to support school leaders, teachers and other staff to develop mentally healthy schools. Their services help build resilience and raise awareness of good mental health across the whole school community, including providing advice and support for parents to help them look after their child.

Find out more about Place2Be's wider work in Scotland.

All student teachers will be encouraged to engage with a bespoke online student teacher version of Place2Be’s Mental Health Champions Foundation Programme. This 5-hour online mental health training programme is designed to foster positive wellbeing in schools and communities. 

Students can access this course in small bite-sized sections as their time allows and will receive a certificate on completion. They will also have continued access to Place2Be’s online ‘Staffroom' for exclusive access to free resources, a community of support and Place2Be’s expertise during their time as a student and as they progress into their teaching career. 

Initial Teacher Education at Moray House

Place2Be