If you need any advice or support for your child or your family, we recommend you share your worry with a professional you feel comfortable talking to or call CHAT (Children’s Help and Advice Team within Early Help) if that works better for you and speak to an advisor. A CHAT advisor can give advice over the phone, send you out information and signposting, or if needed, arrange a package of support through an Early Help Assessment to access a family support worker if required. This could include support from Children’s Centre Services (for families with children aged 5 or under) or Early Help family Support (for families with children 0-18, or up to 25 years with SEND).
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Mental health experts agree that it’s important to maintain a routine in the days of isolation, or everything can blur into sameness. Mark out different parts of the day for different activities. Agree a schedule with your kids, so they know when it’s time to do some gaming, when they need to move about, when they need to make food or be helpful, when they need to sleep.
Eat a balanced diet. Get children involved in planning meals and in helping to prepare them. Make sure everyone drinks lots of water, too.
This is the time to be mindful about your social media use. Are you really concentrating when you pick up your phone? Could you wait another hour before you look?
Walking is a great way to keep physically and mentally healthy. Even short walks in the outdoor space helps clear your mind. Gardening is another way to spend time outdoors planting plants to cheer you up,, pulling weeds and tidying up your outdoor space so you can enjoy time with your family and friends, or maybe even some outdoor exercise.
Home-made Gym – The NHS website has lots of ideas for exercises that need no more equipment than a chair, a pillow or a sofa. Tins of beans could be used as weights.
Yoga is one of the few forms of exercise that requires almost no space. There are hundreds of free online yoga tutorials on YouTube. Yoga with Adrienne is the most popular series. Cole Chance is also recommended – her workouts for beginners to more advanced practitioners, take from 10 mins upwards and target all parts of the body and different times of the day and moods.
Dancing – All you need is some good music. Play your favourite tracks and dance around the house together. It’s such fun and a laugh will cheer you up!
This is related to exercise – we all tend to sleep better if we’ve been physically active. So try to fit some exercise into every day. Try some evening yoga to calm you down. And now is definitely the time to enforce a no-screens-before-bed rule.Â
Lose yourselves in creative activities. It doesn’t matter what the end product looks like  – it’s all about the process and maybe learning something new e.g.
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Use the time you’ve got to learn something new –  perhaps with your children. See the websites under each subject on this page.
Work with your kids on whatever they’re learning – and don’t forget all the useful life-skills that aren’t covered by the curriculum.
Bake and cook together, do some gardening, diy or decorating, learn an instrument or language.
Try everything above and if none of that works, do something you can control. Write down what you’re worried about – in a diary, say – and put it away.
Practise meditation (lots of courses online) and deep breathing. Focus on helping others.