L A T E S T N E W S
PURPLE POST January 2023
Welcome to the January edition of Purple Post
We hope that everyone has had a good first month of the year and is looking forward to the lighter evenings, coming soon (we hope!). In this month’s issue, we have an article covering Children’s Mental Health Week, an update on National Apprenticeship Week, news about a special webinar from Aviva on the subject of neurodiversity in children, and yet again, some remarkable testimonials.
Update from the Functional Skills Team
Our new English tutor, Khaleda Begum has joined us, welcome Khaleda!
Our new maths and English sessions begin in a few weeks, week commencing 6th March
Update from the People team
Children's Mental Health Week 2023
6th February marks the start of Children’s Mental Health Week.
The first Children’s Mental Health Week was launched in 2015 by Place2Be which is a mental health charity that focuses on supporting children in schools with their mental health.
According to statistics released by the NHS, in 2022, 18% of children aged 7 to 16 years of age had a probable mental disorder.
- This shows an increase from the findings in 2017 of 5.9%.
- 8.6% of the children who had a probable mental disorder had missed more than 15 days of school because of their mental health.
- 7.8% of all children surveyed admitted to trying to harm themselves.
Some of these statistics are shocking, but Children’s Mental Health Week is all about raising awareness of mental health in children and supporting parents, carers and teachers.
The theme for this year is "Let's Connect".
This encourages us to have to think about how one can connect with one’s own children, or use this as a training tool for your learners to help them connect with the children they work with. There are lots of useful resources available on the children’s mental health website which can help with building connections or delivering sessions with different age groups:
https://www.childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk/
Connecting with other people is vital for our mental health and well-being. This works the same for children. When they have connections with grown-ups, it can encourage trust and develop a positive relationship to make difficult topics, such as mental health easier to talk about as they get older.
If you’re concerned about the mental health of your own child, or a child you know, you can find out more information, or be signposted to get help in the case of a mental health emergency through the place2be website below:
https://www.place2be.org.uk/ - let’s get connected!
We also cover this incredibly important subject in the February edition of Parenta magazine (page 18), you can
download your copy here.
Aviva Webinar - Neurodiversity in Children
Please find below details of a webinar from Aviva, our Private Medical Insurance provider, on Neurodiversity in Children, taking place next Tuesday, 7th February. It is open to all Parenta employees regardless of whether you are a member of the scheme or not.
If you are not available, you can still register for it as Aviva normally shares a copy of the recording following the event.
Q4 Engagement Survey
There is still time to respond to our latest colleague engagement survey. The closing date is close of business on Friday 10th February. Thank you and we look forward to receiving your feedback.
Please use the link below to complete the survey:
Let’s celebrate our learners during National Apprenticeship Week!
To celebrate National Apprenticeship Week (NAW) from 6th to 12th February, our tutors have been nominating their learners in three different categories - best-performing learner, most engaged learner and learner who has made the most progress. Each of these learners will be receiving a special certificate for their achievements, during NAW. Our learners have also been telling us what they enjoy about their apprenticeship and what skills for life they have learned so far. We have written an article about NAW and have dedicated a page to some of the wonderful comments from our learners – you will find both in February’s Parenta magazine, out now!
Keep those high fives coming!
We have a Kudos winner for December – MIS and Compliance Manager, Cheyenne Vessey, congratulations, Cheyenne!
We caught up with last month’s winner, Nichola Reed and and this is what she had to say about working in the Parenta family:
“My name is Nichola Reed, and I am a tutor at Parenta. I have worked with Parenta for nearly four years and what I love most about my job at Parenta is the friendships I have made. I could not get through the week without the support from Darryll, Sachia, Beth and Kerrie. Working from home can be lonely, so I am super grateful to have these guys to make the working week so much more manageable. The main challenges I feel that I face in my job role is dealing with the pressure we are often put under. There is always a new project we need to be working on with short deadlines to meet and trying to ensure I meet these deadlines while also having a healthy work life balance and not burning myself out is sometimes testing and something I am still working on finding the balance for. Thank you to everyone who voted for me for Kudos.”
What have our customers said this month?
"Excellent support as always. I have always had my queries answered quickly and efficiently by a very professional team. Thank you."
Brishing Barn
“Excellent and Charlotte is always so cheerful on the phone.”
TJ
“I always get a speedy and helpful response to my problems.”
Bbkbourne
“This is all amazing! You are a star!! Thank you for all your help this year, please pass that on to your manager that you have been fantastic and a great support to us all here.”
Old MacDonalds
Requesting Creative Work from the Marketing Team -
* New Information *
We are excited to have launched the marketing ticketing system in Zoho Desk. All managers have access to this and have been sent instructions on how to submit a ticket with the relevant information needed for the team to produce, brand or create documents.
It’s been agreed that only managers should be sending approved work to the marketing team to avoid any confusion or potential rework.
If anyone is unclear or has any questions regarding raising a ticket to the marketing team in Zoho Desk, please do not hesitate to email marketing@parenta.com.
Resources to help us, our learners, and our settings
A reminder that all Parenta resources can be found here on our staff intranet, all in one handy place.
We publish additional industry expert advice, news articles and crafts in our free
magazine and on our
blog.
Here are this month’s How to Guides and documents that have been added to the staff intranet:
We welcomed in January:
- Khaleda Begum - Functional Skills Tutor, 3rd
- Kirsty Taylor - Operations Performance Manager, 9th
We said Goodbye to:
- Fiona Spencer
- Alex Hall
- Harjit Singh
- Alicia Beavis
Parenta Magazine
Our free monthly magazine is packed with news articles and advice pieces - all of which are written to help nursery managers with the efficient running of their settings and to promote the health, happiness and well-being of the children in their care. Please do read it and send the magazine link to your contacts.