BU analysis shows positive impact of stormbreak activities on young people’s lives
A digital tool created by the charity stormbreak for use with children with emotional and behavioural needs has been found to have a positive benefit on children’s mental health, a report has found.
stormbreak is a charity that promotes children’s positive mental health through movement, producing tools and teaching skills to empower children to look after their own mental health.
The stormbreak Shine programme is a digitally led therapeutic journey for trusted adults and children to do together, giving movement-based activities for children and adults to do in support of positive mental health. It is designed for children who may need extra help in managing emotions and behaviours but do not reach the thresholds for specialist services. The tool has been used by local schools and NHS Dorset’s care team when working with younger children.
The evaluation of stormbreak Shine and its use in health care and educational settings was completed by staff from the Department of Sport and Event Management at Bournemouth University and looked at the effectiveness and impact of the digital tool on children and young people using the service, as well as feedback from trusted adults working with the children on the implementation of the tool.
The evaluation found that stormbreak Shine had a positive impact with both children and trusted adults, with an improvement in children’s wellbeing after undertaking the activity. Survey responses were recorded of children taking part in the activity, with results showing overall that general anxiety and emotional problems reduced after doing the exercises with a trusted adult.
Dr Ellie Gennings, a Senior Lecturer in Sports Coaching at Bournemouth University, was one of the academics undertaking the evaluation. She said, “It has been great to work alongside stormbreak and look at the impact that their work is having on young people. We approached this work to get a real understanding of how the digital tool is supporting young people and were really pleased to see the positive benefits children were reporting after completing the pathway”.
Dr Dan Lock, an Associate Professor in Sport at Bournemouth University, and another of the report’s authors, said, “Sport and movement can be vital tools in promoting positive mental health, whatever your age, and we were pleased to see this underlined in the research. However, we also made recommendations for how these tools can be better implemented and sharpened to ensure their long-term success too, and how greater support could be given to trusted adults in how they work with young people through these activities”.
Dr Martin Yelling, stormbreak CEO and Founder, said, “As a small charity, with big aspirations, independent evaluation is vitally important to us. It provides an opportunity to consolidate learning and successes from developing and implementing stormbreak Shine, an innovative digital tool created to support children's emotional wellbeing using mentally healthy movement. This important research and the emerging patterns and trends that show improvements in children's emotional wellbeing, reduction in children's anxiety and improvements in trusted adults mental health literacy and delivery confidence are promising foundations helping us support healthy, happy children.”
The report gathered testimonies from users, with the intuitive design, easy-to-use technology and enhanced knowledge of positive mental health all highlighted as additional benefits of stormbreak Shine.
