No man is an island,
Whole of itself;
Each man is a chunk of the continent,
Part of the primary.
To riff on the 17th Century poem by John Donne, ‘No little one is an island’. Not less than, this can be a central thesis underpinning Brown and colleague’s 2025 paper during which they define an method to school-based wellbeing programmes that harness younger individuals’s relationships to at least one one other, their faculty, and their wider neighborhood.
The subject of school-based programmes to help kids’s wellbeing is a well timed one given proof that 1 in 4 younger individuals in England has a possible psychological well being dysfunction (NHS England, 2024). This rise within the charge of psychological well being issues have led to calls from policymakers to embed psychological well being help inside faculties.
Nevertheless, the determinants of psychological well being issues are advanced and multifaceted, working throughout a number of methods inside and out of doors faculties themselves. For instance, we all know late childhood and early adolescence is a interval of social reorientation during which younger individuals come to align their id with their peer group (learn Emily’s weblog to study extra) and programmes that help younger individuals construct peer relationships can enhance their wellbeing (Veenstra & Laninga-Wijnen, 2022).
Cultural id – and the extent to which that is embraced or minoritised – can even affect psychological well being outcomes. On this paper, Brown and colleagues (2025) introduce their ‘Related Belonging’ mannequin, an method to high school wellbeing methods that locations much less emphasis on particular person abilities and highlights younger individuals’s intersectional identities.
Relationships are key in adolescence, and Brown et al.’s (2025) Related Belonging mannequin place this on the centre.
Strategies
To introduce and help their mannequin, the authors narratively summarise 4 research they beforehand performed earlier than outlining how these findings have been used to develop the Related Belongings mannequin. It is very important notice that the mannequin is predominantly based mostly on the findings from these 4 research, which embody:
- A rigorous, large-scale overview of training coverage throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Eire, offering an summary of present apply.
- A qualitative, photo-narrative research asking pupils’ views on school-based psychological well being programmes, performed throughout seven faculties in South East England.
- An Australian-based research evaluating school-based approaches to wellbeing, with themes derived in collaboration with the younger individuals participating within the interviews.
- An analysis of younger individuals susceptible to leaving training, and a trial of a co-designed intervention to help these pupils
Nevertheless, Brown and colleagues do additionally draw on a variety of literature that corroborates their findings.
Outcomes
The Related Belonging mannequin places the younger particular person, and their particular person id, on the coronary heart of the method to school-based wellbeing programmes. This core element is surrounded by materials, relational and subjective dimensions that may both promote or hinder wellbeing. The mannequin is explicitly contrasted towards present approaches to high school wellbeing programmes that target instructing younger individuals abilities and competencies, reminiscent of displaying ‘grit’ within the face of pressures inside their lives.
Moderately, by enhancing younger individuals’s relationships to the methods that encompass and form them, the Related Belonging mannequin takes a extra holistic method to younger individuals’s wellbeing in faculties.
So, what are the scale of the Related Belonging mannequin?
- Faculty id, which describes the extent to which a youngster feels a part of their faculty neighborhood. To successfully help younger individuals’s faculty id, instructional establishments ought to assist younger individuals develop a optimistic id inside their research no matter studying kinds, aptitudes, skills and pursuits.
- Cultural id, which is younger individuals’s sense of their relationships to their background and tradition(s). Faculties can play an energetic position in nurturing this function of younger individuals’s id by displaying understanding and sensitivity in the direction of completely different practices, beliefs and values, whereas making certain these should not discriminated towards by employees or college students.
- Local people id, outlined as younger individuals’s place inside the space they stay in, however exterior of their quick house setting. The extent to which faculties interact with the area people, reminiscent of partnering with neighborhood teams or instructing native historical past, will be each a facilitator and barrier to this facet of younger individuals’s id.
- Place attachment, which in contrast to the opposite domains described to this point, refers to younger individuals’s skill to establish a bodily location or area they really feel secure or really feel that they belong in, and is especially well timed in context of the decline in ‘third areas’ (Finlay et al., 2020). Faculties can themselves be these locations for younger individuals.
- Social id and the intersectional traits that replicate that younger particular person, together with their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, diagnoses and life experiences (e.g., being care-experienced). Faculties’ roles in supporting the inclusion of all pupils can mitigate the multiplicative boundaries confronted by these from minoritized backgrounds.
- Peer group id, describing younger individuals’s connectedness to their peer group, and could also be supported by initiatives to scale back victimisation reminiscent of bullying prevention programmes.
- Citizenship id, which is the extent to which younger individuals establish themselves as nationwide and international residents. The diploma to which faculties help younger individuals’s engagement with nationwide and international points can affect this area of younger individuals’s id.
The Related Belonging mannequin is contrasted towards present approaches in faculties that target ‘grit’.
Conclusion
As a mannequin, Related Belonging locations the younger individuals on the centre of a fancy setting. Supporting younger individuals to navigate these completely different domains is proposed as a brand new and efficient method to school-based wellbeing programmes.
Nevertheless, whereas the Related Belonging mannequin proposes these domains are related to all younger individuals, it doesn’t ascribe the relative significance of those domains and acknowledges these could fluctuate throughout younger individuals. For instance, within the third of the 4 research used to derive this mannequin, Aboriginal younger individuals described their views on id formation and positioned higher emphasis on place attachment to nature in comparison with younger individuals from the UK.
Whereas this method could help the adaptability of the mannequin to younger individuals in several contexts, it might make it difficult to guage which elements of the mannequin enhance wellbeing, and whether or not every element contributes equally to adjustments in wellbeing.
Faculties can foster younger individuals’s relationships to completely different elements of their id. That is an method that faculties could wish to think about adopting in relation to wellbeing.
Strengths and limitations
This paper is a complete define of a novel method to school-based wellbeing. It has a notable power of drawing on separate our bodies of proof to substantiate the mannequin, together with a big coverage overview and qualitative proof from worldwide sources (which included Aboriginal younger people who find themselves sometimes underrepresented in research). This power signifies that proof is triangulated throughout completely different sources and reduces the chance the mannequin is biased to at least one explicit context or group of younger individuals. An additional benefit is that wellbeing will not be conceptualised as one thing restricted to varsities alone, and reasonably faculties play one (necessary!) half in younger individuals’s advanced lives.
Nevertheless, these strengths needs to be thought-about in context of some notable limitations. First, the mannequin is derived from solely 4 research, regardless of there being an enormous literature evaluating school-based approaches to psychological well being and wellbeing. This comparatively slender focus could miss different approaches to school-based psychological well being, reminiscent of these that don’t depend on whole-school approaches.
As well as, no formal methodology was specified when describing how the findings from these 4 research have been synthesised to develop the mannequin, which limits reproducibility and doesn’t present details about the extent to which the mannequin built-in the complete knowledge from these research.
Additional, the paper lacks an outline of how this mannequin may be formally examined towards present approaches to school-based wellbeing. An outline of the quantitative or qualitative strategies that would offer an empirical check of this mannequin could be useful to check whether or not this mannequin does enhance college students’ wellbeing in comparison with present approaches.
It will even be fascinating to think about the extent to which this mannequin may generalize to different, non-mainstream faculty settings, reminiscent of Pupil Referral Models that are settings for college students who want further help as a result of behavioural points. Whether or not younger individuals with behavioural points think about these domains necessary to their wellbeing could be an fascinating avenue to discover.
The Related Belonging mannequin is predominantly based mostly on 4 research, and it’s unclear within the paper how these findings have been synthesised to develop the mannequin.
Implications for apply
The Related Belonging mannequin affords an fascinating alternate method to supporting younger individuals’s wellbeing inside the faculty setting and is a crucial contribution to the literature given the position that faculties now play in early intervention and prevention.
Nevertheless, additional testing and analysis is required to higher perceive how this mannequin may match into completely different education contexts, and its potential to be utilised inside analysis, coverage and apply. To do that, researchers might conduct analysis inside and between faculties to check associations between area power and optimistic psychological well being outcomes, figuring out the power of influence and which domains appear to be most necessary in several contexts.
Based mostly on the findings from additional analysis, policymakers may have to think about shifting past narratives targeted on particular person resilience in the direction of approaches that target relationships and id. Nevertheless, if that is completed, the change will should be knowledgeable by engagement with stakeholders, together with younger individuals, dad and mom, academics, clinicians, and researchers.
Lastly, academics and college employees could wish to think about figuring out which domains of id are inspired of their settings, and which may be additional supported.
Ought to coverage swap from an method targeted on particular person resilience in the direction of one which centres id and relationships? Extra analysis is required to search out out.
Assertion of pursuits
Alex Lloyd – None.
Edited by
Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney
Hyperlinks
Main paper
Ceri Brown, Alison Douthwaite, Michael Donnelly, & Marnee Shay (2025). Related Belonging: A relational and id‐based mostly method to varsities’ position in selling little one wellbeing. British Academic Analysis Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4112
Different references
Donne, J. (1624). Devotions upon Emergent Events.
Finlay, J., Esposito, M., Kim, M. H., Gomez-Lopez, I., & Clarke, P. (2019). Closure of ‘third locations’? Exploring potential penalties for collective well being and wellbeing. Well being & Place, 60, 102225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102225
Stapley, E. (2018). Peer affect and danger taking behaviour throughout adolescence. The Psychological Elf.
Veenstra, R., & Laninga-Wijnen, L. (2022). Peer community research and interventions in adolescence. Present Opinion in Psychology, 44, 157-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.09.015
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