Kooth partners with GLUU to help support the mental health of whole school communities

Kooth has partnered with GLUU to provide schools with askOLA, the online tutoring and support platform, with invaluable digital mental health support. 

Kooth will ensure students aged 10+, all teachers, teaching support staff and on-site staff have a safe, confidential and welcoming place to seek non-judgemental mental health support. The collaboration is the first of its kind, enabling education establishments to purchase online learning resources and wellbeing together in one accessible and flexible package. 

askOLA is a responsive, online tutoring and support platform that provides homework help, writing feedback, and study support on-demand, during and beyond school hours. It selected Kooth for its holistic approach to mental health and wellbeing, and its ability to look after the whole school community.

Kooth’s innovative digital mental health and wellbeing platform has been designed to offer choice and encourage users to engage and seek help on their own terms. As such, it offers access to a variety of support options including online counselling and wellbeing, via its Kooth.com (aged 10+) and Qwell.io (aged 18+) services 

Services are accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week – this includes one-to-one text based sessions with experienced counsellors and wellbeing practitioners. Running from midday to 10pm on weekdays and from 6pm to 10pm on the weekend, appointments can be booked in advance or accessed via a drop-in text-based chat. They are available without waiting lists or thresholds to meet, and a referral from a medical professional is not needed. In addition, Kooth provides an easily accessible, fully safeguarded and pre-moderated community with a library of peer and professional created content.  

It doesn’t end there, Kooth’s Flourish Mental Health Check runs alongside the award-winning anonymous digital mental health platform. A benchmark tool, unlike others, the Flourish Mental Health Check is based on the ‘whole self’. As such it recognises that home life and past experiences play an important part in people’s wellbeing at work. 

The anonymous insights are garnered from the teachers, teaching support staff and on-site staff only, not the students. The Kooth Work Flourish Mental Health Check will help the schools signed up to the askOLA platform to identify priority issues when it comes to the mental health and wellbeing of all those working at the school – both teaching and support roles.

This will help them to invest in the right initiatives, as well as developing and implementing new policies, practices and support programmes, that meet the needs of the school as an employer. This will aid in the creation of a mentally healthy workplace where everyone can flourish and no one is left behind. 

Dr Lynne Green, Chief Clinical Office at Kooth, commented: 

“We’re thrilled to be partnering with GLUU and its askOLA platform to help ensure that anonymous, safe and accessible positive mental health and emotional wellbeing is available to whole school communities. Now more than ever, it’s important to ensure that both students, teachers and the onsite support teams have a choice of safe and confidential options that match with their individual needs, as well as being accessible in a way they feel comfortable with. Digital mental health services such as Kooth do that, and can help to reduce the stigma often associated with mental health.  However big or small a student or teacher believes a mental health concern or issue is, Kooth Work is onhand to help them, when and where needed.”

Christine Major, CEO at GLUU explained:

“askOLA was developed to add capacity to schools to reduce teacher workload and support the wellbeing and attainment of the whole school community. Teachers need more time to help pupils to thrive, and askOLA gives them another pair of hands by helping to support learning and wellbeing in and outside of the classroom. It means that students can access subject-specialist coaches on-demand to help overcome issues with their learning, or they can be connected to Kooth for support with their mental health. We also provide all school staff with access to mental health support through Qwell.

She added: “Partnering with Kooth was a logical choice as our values are closely aligned, as like us they believe that mental health support should be accessible to everyone”

Kooth is the only digital mental health provider to hold a UK-wide accreditation from the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP). It is available to school’s with the askOLA platform immediately, once registered, they can access support via any internet-connected device such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet.