WellAhead
Our Approach
WellAhead aimed to improve child and youth mental health by integrating social and emotional wellbeing into K-12 education. It focused on long-term change to better incorporate social and emotional wellbeing into the day-to-day of schools and classrooms. It sunsetted in February 2021. Associated resources remain archived here.
Focus Areas
Understand what works and why
WellAhead experiments with a range of approaches to better integrate social and emotional wellbeing into schools.
These include:
- Finding ways to better measure the wellbeing of children. This allows schools to better respond to their needs and be more conscious of social and emotional outcomes.
- Testing everyday practices to support wellbeing in schools and classrooms
- Working collectively across stakeholder groups to explore and implement solutions in school boards and districts
- Increasing human resource capacity at the board and district level to advance wellbeing efforts
Build capacity and connection
WellAhead looks to advance existing efforts by building capacity and connection at the school, district, and provincial level.
This includes:
- Supporting multi-stakeholder groups and networks to increase their impact
- Sharing expertise on social innovation, scaling Scaling: Scaling out (disseminating ideas to new jurisdictions), scaling up (influencing policy and resources) and scaling deep (shifting behaviour and attitudes). and systems change with organizations and institutions
- Convening leaders and stakeholders provincially and nationally. This helps in understanding the current system and exploring opportunities to advance wellbeing in K-12 education
- Making links between actors to collaborate. Greater impact is achieved when people work outside of their silos
- Supporting professional learning opportunities and exchanges
Influence policy and practice
WellAhead’s ultimate goal is systems change - the policies, culture, structures, resource flows and practices that help advance student wellbeing.
Though our role in achieving this differs from province to province, some of our general strategies include:
- Sharing objective recommendations with relevant government ministries
- Mobilizing knowledge on best (or promising) practices from other jurisdictions
How We Support Change
Recent Funding & Investments
School Mental Health ASSIST
A grant to School Mental Health ASSIST will be used to share lessons from its evidence-based implementation science model across Canada and to build teach capacity in Ontario schools to [...]
$ 300,000
People for Education
A grant from the Foundation will enable People for Education to continue to engage policy-makers, researchers, educators and parents in Measuring What Matters - an initiative focused on competencies and [...]
$ 180,000
Revivre
Revivre will use funds to scale its mental health self-management program J’Avance across Canada.
$ 300,000
Taking IT Global
Funds will be used to help Taking IT Global expand their Connected North program into more schools in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.
$ 575,431
Impact & Lessons Learned
Advancing wellbeing in schools
In 2015, WellAhead began working in British Columbia to experiment with ways to better integrate wellbeing into K-12 education. In Advancing Wellbeing in Schools, WellAhead shares 15 lessons about education, [...]
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