Youth Mental Health Response
A purpose-built mental health response training for the adults around young people in international schools.
Three tiers, one curriculum, each tier matched to the role the adult plays.
The System at a Glance
Why Three Tiers and not one?
International schools don't operate like national schools. Families often move countries every two to four years. Students switch languages between lessons. The mental health support a family could access in Frankfurt looks nothing like what's available in Singapore, and the demographic walking through the front gate changes every August.
The three tiers are a response to how the work actually distributes itself in these communities. A parent is often the first to notice their child is shifting, and needs the skills for that. A school leader holds the conditions that let everyone else's work matter, and needs the skills for that. A teacher sits between them.
The depth of training matches the depth of the role.
Our ANCHOR Framework
At the centre of every Let's Be Real training is ANCHOR, our supportive response framework for the moment a young person, a colleague, or your own child needs you most. It sits within the broader tradition of mental health first aid: the principle that non-clinicians, given the right framework, can offer the initial response that keeps someone safe, heard, and connected to the help they need.
The framework stays the same across the three tiers. What changes is the depth at which we work with it. A four-hour parent session focuses on the early steps in a family context. A one-day teacher session adds the institutional realities of working inside a school. A two-day leader programme works on what it takes to make the framework culturally embedded across an entire school community.
ANCHOR is grounded in the mental health literacy research literature, drawing on Kitchener and Jorm's foundational work on supportive response and the subsequent research on disclosure and safeguarding in school contexts.
01
A
Arrive calm
02
N
Notice without judging
03
C
Confirm you've heard
04
H
Honour the limits
05
O
Organise support
06
R
Return
The tiers in detail
Notice
For parents who want to be useful when their own child is shifting, struggling, or pulling away. Practical skills for the conversations that happen at the kitchen table, in the car, in the long silence before bed.
What we cover
- The ANCHOR framework, adapted for use inside the family
- Recognising early signs and the difference between developmentally typical change and something that warrants a closer look
- Starting and holding a supportive conversation when your child doesn't want to talk
- Knowing when, how, and to whom to escalate, including how to work with the school
- Looking after your own wellbeing while supporting your child
A single half-day. Join through your school, or directly through a Let's Be Real open cohort.
Hold
For the classroom teachers, advisors, and pastoral staff who see young people every week. Builds the confidence to spot early signs, stay present in a supportive conversation, and hand a young person on with continuity of care.
What we cover
- ANCHOR in the classroom: applying the framework across short conversations, ongoing relationships, and handover to colleagues
- Adolescent mental health literacy: the conditions students most commonly encounter, the early warning signs, and the language that helps rather than hinders
- Working with your school's existing safeguarding and pastoral structures, including documentation and the limits of your role
- The international school context: third culture experience, mobility, language, and how these shape what mental health looks like in your students
A full day, in-person where possible.
Lead
For heads of pastoral care, deputy heads, counsellors, and school directors. Goes beyond first response into the systems that make everything else possible.
What we cover
- All Hold-level content, taken to greater depth
- Designing pastoral and mental health policy that holds up in a real crisis: referral pathways, documentation, parent communication
- Supervising the youth mental health responders in your school, including reflective practice, refresher cycles, and vicarious load
- Building a whole-school mental health literacy environment
- Parent engagement strategy: bringing families into the work without it falling on individual teachers
- The international school dimension: working across cultures, languages, and transient populations
A full day, in-person where possible.
A note on certification
Our trainers hold current professional certifications in mental health first response. The Let's Be Real curriculum is independently developed, drawing on established frameworks and built specifically for international school communities. We're happy to talk through the detail in a discovery call.
FAQ’s
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Yes. All three tiers result in a certificate of completion issued by Let's Be Real, valid for three years in line with industry-standard refresher cycles. The training is delivered by trainers who hold current professional certifications in mental health first response. We don't hold a license from MHFA International or any national body, and we're upfront about that. Our curriculum is independently developed for the realities of international school communities, drawing on the same research base.
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It strengthens them rather than replaces them. We don't ask schools to dismantle anything that's already working. The Hold tier (for teachers) and Lead tier (for leaders) explicitly address how to integrate first response practice with your existing reporting lines, designated safeguarding lead, documentation standards, and pastoral team. The co-design conversation at the start of every engagement is partly so we can understand what's already in place before training anyone.
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A one-off INSET raises awareness. This builds capability. Awareness changes what people think about mental health; capability changes what they can do when a young person is struggling in front of them. The depth of practice in Hold and Lead (particularly the conversation work and the systems thinking) is what separates trained responders from informed bystanders. Schools running both report that the INSETs make more sense once the responder layer is in place.
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Yes. Notice (the parent tier) runs both as a school-commissioned programme and as a Let's Be Real open cohort that any parent can join directly. Many parents come to us because their child's school doesn't yet offer this kind of training, or because they want to be equipped before something happens rather than after. Working with parents directly is part of the programme, not an exception to it.
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Yes. Our trainers work internationally and most of our delivery is on-site at the commissioning school. We have working relationships with international schools across Europe and have delivered programmes elsewhere on request. The co-design conversation covers logistics, including which sessions are best done in-person and which can run remotely without losing fidelity (Lead, in particular, benefits from being in the room with the leadership team).