Reflecting on 2024 with stormbreak
As we look back on a very busy year at stormbreak, we’d love to share what we have achieved, thanks to you: our friends, followers and supporters.
Darryl Walsh, Director of school operations at stormbreak writes…
“Through our work with schools this year, it’s become clear that many challenges remain. A significant number of children are still struggling, particularly when it comes to resilience and building positive relationships. Many are finding it difficult to transition into school each day and separate from parents and carers. Additionally, we continue to see how parental mental health is affecting the emotional wellbeing of primary-aged children.
As always, we are here to support you with stormbreak, helping ensure it is both sustainable and successful in your settings. Our goal is to empower the children you work with by providing them the tools, knowledge, and resources they need to support their mental health and wellbeing now, and into the future, to grow into happy, healthy individuals.
Surge Training
This year, we’ve continued to build on the success of Surge, working with 64 new schools and expanding our reach to both familiar and new areas. We’ve supported schools in regions like Hampshire, Gateshead, Dorset, and Bedfordshire, while also working in new areas such as Oxfordshire, Milton Keynes/Buckinghamshire, Devon, Wales, and Lancashire.
A recent highlight was translating our resource pack into Welsh, so schools in Wales now have the option to use resources in either English or Welsh. In November, we also had the privilege of working with 24 Girlguiding leaders from across the Midlands, showing them how they can use our resources to support the girls they work with. We’re excited to see how this new initiative develops.
If you know of any schools or organisations that might be interested in our work, we’d love to connect.
Surge Light Training
Surge Light, offering schools a more flexible way to engage with stormbreak Surge, has started to gain momentum in 2024. So far, the feedback has been very positive, as schools self-lead their Surge training online at times most appropriate and accessible for them. With time often the big challenge in primary schools, we hope Surge Light can be a great option.
Stormbreak Plus Membership
Stormbreak Plus has been available to schools for just over a year now, and we’re seeing increasing engagement. This resource provides schools with access to Shine, stormbreak Champion, and a variety of new videos and activities (including Breath Moves, Wild Moves, and Sensory Moves). Stay tuned for even more exciting content, including Musical Moves, Play Moves, and Focus Moves, along with new movement types and stormbreaks on the horizon!
Kate Bone, Director of coaching and development at stormbreak writes…
New stormbreaks on the horizon always keep our content fresh and excite us as we see how new movement types can potentially engage the children accessing them. From Musical Moves, ready for release soon for stormbreak Plus members, to Sensory Moves out now, and the new suite of Football Moves about to be developed with AFC Bournemouth, we hope there is something for everyone and always a new way to get children excited about mentally healthy movement.
We have developed many new positive relationships with the stormbreak Together programme, which works specifically with families including in fostering and military settings. We have worked closely with a cohort of 11 families this year, and have secured funding for more Together work in 2025. Perhaps the most stand-out moment of this year was the development of Voices Through the Storm, a project in which we worked with care-experienced children to develop their own stormbreak videos, drawing on their own experiences of emotional wellbeing. We were so proud to receive a National Award from Coram Voice for this work.
Victoria Stamp, Director of emotional wellbeing at stormbreak writes…
“2024 has been a big year for Shine, our digital intervention programme for children with early emerging need. We have run 10 Shine support programmes in 2024 with up to 10 organisations on each programme.
In its first full year the Shine Team have had to show resilience and creativity to support implementation in a variety of settings, often offering a bespoke solution for organisations. This has led to the development of a new stormbreak programme - Shine Support Programme. This programme has allowed colleagues to work together to implement Shine in a way to best support the children they work with, live with and care for, in a way that has the most impact for them. While children access targeted pathways including those focusing on worry, sensory challenges and helpful rather than harmful behaviours, the feedback we receive from trusted adults is powerful. This quote sums that up:
“Before starting the Shine pathway, I had one child who would often start the school day crying and shaking. After starting the pathway we were quickly able to identify that his worry had stemmed from hearing stories from older children talking about the ‘bad things’ that happen when you start secondary school. Through the pathway we were also able to provide the child with strategies to manage his worry. Almost immediately the crying and shaking stopped. By the end of the summer term we noticed he was completely relaxed and was able to talk to his mum more openly and honestly. When this child left our school in the summer, he gave me a painted pebble as a gift that simply said ‘calm’.””
Reflections from our CEO:
“For me 2024 for stormbreak has been both a year of challenge and a year of success! One of our priority goals for the year was to continue to develop our sustainable funding model through diversification of income streams from commissioned services, grants trusts and awards and donations. We've made really positive inroads into this throughout the year and have established some positive new partnerships. The landscape for charity fundraising is tricky and so this has been an important part of our growth and I am excited about continuing this focus. Caroline, leading on our fundraising in 2024, has been instrumental in helping make this happen.
Celebrating the one millionth stormbreak was one of my personal highlights. When setting up stormbreak back in 2019 if you'd had said we'd have the tech to log, track and monitor every single stormbreak and that we'd see over 60,000 children having experienced over a million stormbreaks I'd have been well pleased. Yet, here we are, and it's growing all the time. I really believe that we are just at the start of what is possible and with the right support we can go on to impact more children's lives in positive ways.
The stormbreak Together ‘Voices Through the Storm’ project was an amazing time! I loved seeing the care experienced young people come together and explore what emotional wellbeing and mental health means to them, and how they can use these experiences to support other children in care through the stormbreaks they developed.
Being in the AFC Bournemouth Match Day programme was a blink to believe it moment! We are an AFCB charity partner and they have been very supportive in letting us use the Vitality Stadium. I'm really excited about the potential of the forthcoming Football Moves in partnership with them… watch this space for that.
Seeing our team go to BERA and present papers in a symposium on children's mental health is testament to the hard work that goes into developing, delivering and evaluating the stormbreak programmes. Reading our ongoing impact that says 'stormbreak improves children's wellbeing' is why we do what we do!
We recently delivered a stormbreak Shine workshop as part of a project supporting teachers to help children with neurodivergent characteristics and almost all of the schools in the room from across BCP had heard of stormbreak already. This was great awareness!
And finally, being there for each other. I'm so proud of the stormbreak team. Working in a fledgling organization can be filled with uncertainty and challenge. It's not always plain sailing. The stormbreak family have relentlessly risen to the needs and possibilities of stormbreak and their commitment to help children and the trusted adults that live with, work with, care for and love them is immense.
Thank you to everyone who has supported stormbreak throughout 2024.”
Dr Martin Yelling, stormbreak CEO