St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School Pupil voted Leeds Children’s Mayor!

Congratulations to Esosa from St Patrick’s Catholic Primary School in Leeds on being elected as Leeds Children’s Mayor for 2024-2025!

Esosa’s manifesto

Issue: Mental health and wellbeing

Describe three things you and your school could do to tackle this issue

1. Have a “Positive Thoughts” day where we say positive sentences to each other – we could do a day every half term – this would boost everyone’s happiness and those with mental health problems may feel like they can talk to someone
2. Have a place to go to in school to be able to “Relax and chat”, inside or outside, we could decorate a space or a bench in a calm and safe way, and have chance to go there with permission to be able to talk to an adult of our choice or take a friend, this can have some calming music, books and nice smelling things
3. We could work the Mental Health Leads in school and with local groups such as D-Side to arrange groups to come into school and explain the issues with mental health and give us ideas on how to help ourselves by doing small group work and helping us to understand the language and how we can spot issues and give advice to other children who may need it.

Describe three things Leeds as a city could do to tackle this issue

1. Encourage groups of schools to have children ambassadors that can create resources and packs, share these and do lessons about mental health by children for children including introducing an annual Leeds Positive Thoughts Day where schools could enter a competition in the first year to create the logo and then each year to create a yearly badge for all to wear to promote the Positive Thoughts Day helping children and staff to remind them to be positive. This day could be during the annual Mental Health Week.
2. In the future, for all schools to have a trained counsellor or access to a counsellor for children to be able to book into if they have any problems they want to speak to or roll out and create their own “Relax and chat” spaces around schools, in Leeds whether this be a bench or an area for lonely/vulnerable people.
3. Promote local youth therapy places and have these displayed in schools so we know where to go and is free for primary school children or a small cost to families so that everyone can access it.

Summary

If Mental Health is tackled early through therapy, talking and understanding the issues, then we can help Leeds to have an improved, positive future.

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It’s thought that Esosa may be the first pupil from a Catholic school to hold the prestigious position of Leeds Children’s Mayor – but with three children out of the final twelve standing for election being from one of our Catholic primary schools, they are all to be congratulated as ‘trailblazers’!

Esosa is pictured below with her new ‘colleague’, Cllr Abigail Marshall Katung, 130th Lord Mayor of Leeds and a great friend to our Diocese (and a ‘trailblazer’ herself as the first person of African heritage to be Lord Mayor of the city)!