Latest news with #UniversityofChester
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Focus on children's mental health in Bolton as specialists lead conference
How to look after the mental health of children will take centre stage at a conference in Bolton this summer. The conference will showcase The Hummingbird Project, a six-week Positive Psychology course designed to empower young people to flourish and thrive. The course is delivered free of charge to schools by children's charity MedEquip4Kids in partnership with researchers from the University of Greater Manchester, the University of Chester, and the Open University. So far more than 8,000 primary and secondary pupils across the region have taken part in the project, reporting increased wellbeing and happiness, as well as reduced signs of anxiety and depression. MedEquip4Kids (Image: MedEquip4Kids)READ MORE: The conference is set to take place on Friday July 11 from 10am at the Deane Lecture Theatre, Senate House in the University of Greater Manchester. The course covers the following topics: happiness, kindness, gratitude, mindfulness, character strengths, resilience, and growth mindsets. Each session includes interactive and engaging activities. At the end of the course, schools receive a box of resources including books, sensory toys, and games to reinforce their learning. The conference takes place on July 11, starting at 10am. Attendance is free to register visit : With mental health challenges said to be at a record high among children and teenagers, the Hummingbird Project is designed to offer a solution to support emotional resilience in schools. It is thought to be the only multi-component programme of its kind in the UK offered entirely free to both primary and secondary schools. The event will be chaired by Professor Jerome Carson from the University of Greater Manchester, who is a leading authority in Positive Psychology and mental health. Professor Carson said: 'Rising problems in children's mental health have been an increasing concern over the last decade and especially since the pandemic. 'The Hummingbird Project incorporates the latest research from Positive Psychology to improve young people's wellbeing, help them thrive and get the most out of life. 'The project is a great example of Knowledge Exchange between the university and the charity MedEquip4Kids for the benefit of thousands of young people.' The conference, which will be attended by the Mayor of Bolton, will bring together local educators, psychologists and other healthcare professionals. Attendees will have the opportunity to: - Hear insights from the staff and academic researchers behind the programme. - Discover how the course is delivered and evaluated in schools. - Learn how to bring the Hummingbird Project into more classrooms across the region.
BBC News
10-04-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Isle of Man degree course change to make students 'work ready'
Ensuring graduates are "work-ready" is behind an overhaul of the delivery of degree courses at the Isle of Man's only higher education College Isle of Man (UCM) has developed a new framework along with the University of Chester, which accredits and awards its students' include the introduction of competency based assessments, including case studies and employer briefs for their courses to demonstrate vocational approach has been tailed to deliver more compact timetable, allowing those studying to continue to work part-time as they qualified. Intensive teaching Higher education manager Gail Corrin said the new approach, which would be phased in from September, would make graduates "not only academically prepared but also work ready". The a stronger focus on "practical competencies and authentic assessment" along would leave students "equipped with the skills and experience that employers are looking for".Under the changes, block teaching of some courses would see larger modules assessed in a single timetables would also offer full and intensive teaching days along with additional digital resources aimed to cater to students who worked in part-time Corrin said all UCM course would adopt the approach by an ongoing review of its offering, UCM previously announced it would offer a new degree in Applied Social Science in September 2025. Read more stories from the Isle of Man on the BBC, watch BBC North West Tonight on BBC iPlayer and follow BBC Isle of Man on Facebook and X.
The Guardian
29-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘A common humanity': the British families who tended graves of German soldiers
For some, tending the graves was an act of reconciliation. For others, it was about acknowledging shared losses and shared grief. Thousands of Germans who died in Britain during the first and second world wars were laid to rest in local graveyards. British people tended these graves for decades, even laying flowers and wreaths for their former foes. A historian has uncovered new details of this extraordinary relationship, and found that more than 7,000 German soldiers and prisoners of war were once buried in cemeteries near the British towns and villages where they died. Tim Grady, professor of modern history at the University of Chester, unearthed a previously overlooked pile of documents 'wrapped in brown paper' in the German War Graves Commission (VDK) archives, which turned out to be interwar records about the graves from the German embassy in London that no scholar had ever consulted. After the wars, Grady said, there were so many dead soldiers scattered across the globe that people felt that tending to the war graves in their local area was a 'tangible' way of overcoming the 'horrors of war'. 'If you can do something for the war dead who are close to you, perhaps other people will do the same for your loved ones, wherever they are buried,' he said. The policy of the Imperial War Graves Commission was to leave the bodies of British soldiers in the country where they had died, too, meaning thousands were buried in military cemeteries abroad rather than repatriated. Grady discovered that one British couple who lost their son in the first world war tended the grave of a German fighter whose plane came down near their home. 'They've got this shared experience of loss that they feel is bonding them together with the other bereaved family,' he said. Most of the time, however, it wasn't a straightforward reciprocal arrangement, he said. 'It was based on a kind of common humanity, coming out of the wars, where I think people wanted to try to build a better future and they saw caring for the enemy dead was a way to do this.' In Bishop's Stortford, Herts, one family made it 'almost their life's mission' to look after the graves of 15 German war dead buried there. 'They spent all their money tending these graves – they say they do it to comfort the mothers back in Germany, and as a basis for reconciliation.' There are even examples of people laying wreaths on German graves on Remembrance Day 'because they want to unite them' with British graves, Grady said. Others left flowers or took photos of the graves for bereaved family members back in Germany, inviting them to visit. Some people also responded to letters German families wrote to local councils in the UK, asking for information after learning a loved one had died nearby. 'And so you start to get genuine human contact between the two sides – and that breaks down barriers between the British and the Germans after both wars. That's the initial basis for some form of reconciliation between the two populations that were enemies.' Between 1962 and 1963 the German government systematically exhumed almost all the bodies of their war dead from graves across the UK and reburied them in a single military cemetery on Cannock Chase, Staffordshire. But its efforts were met with unexpected resistance from British people who had, in some cases, been tending the graves for almost 50 years. 'In one cemetery in Yorkshire, a local councillor saw the German team coming to exhume a couple of these German graves and he threatened to call the police,' said Grady, whose book, Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those Who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars, was published last week. 'He said: 'You can't take them. These are our Germans. We've been looking after them.' And he tried to stop them. But the exhumation team had papers from the Home Office that say they're allowed to do this. They can't be stopped.' The graves of the German war dead in Britain played a crucial role in restoring relations between the countries after the world wars, Grady said. One RAF commander filled 12 wooden urns with soil from German graves near his base in Sussex, and sent the urns to the bereaved German families of those who were buried there. 'One of them was an unknown pilot, so they couldn't trace his family. The VDK has still got that urn sitting in its archive.' In Poole, Dorset, a British man who lived opposite a cemetery bumped into the widow of a Nazi bomber who had been shot down and buried there. 'She was visiting her husband's grave after the war.' After meeting at the graveside, they stayed in contact, exchanging Christmas cards and letters. 'He tends the grave, laying flowers there and writing to her about how the grave is. He even ends up going over to Germany on holiday, and stays with her and her new husband.' In Montrose, Scotland, 'lots of local people' welcomed the mother of a Nazi killed nearby in a plane crash, when she visited her son's grave in the early 1950s. 'Somebody wanted to drive her to the cemetery, somebody wanted to find her a hotel, someone else wanted to take her out for dinner. All to show her: we're no longer enemies, we understand your loss, let's work together.' Such connections were important for Anglo-German relations, Grady said, as they involved ordinary people and their communities. 'Because the enemy bodies were buried locally, it forced people locally to recognise that the other side also experienced loss.'
