Hi everybody. I'm Helen Tupper. I'm one of the co-hosts of the Swiggly Careers podcast and I'm here virtually of course with Sarah. Hi everyone. And this is a very special episode of our podcast and one that we're particularly proud of and just happy that we're able to bring these conversations to you. In the UK, it's Mental Health Awareness Week and we wanted to find out how people are working

on the front line. So whether that's doctors, teachers, carers or parents who now find themselves

homeschooling and working at the same time, we wanted to understand a little bit about how their

work has changed and how they're taking care of themselves and others during what feels

like a really tough time. And all our episodes supporting Mental Health Awareness Week have been

really kindly supported by the BPA UK Foundation. The foundation is a charity and their purpose is to

help people live longer, healthier and happier lives, which sounds pretty good to me. And they fund

loads of really practical

projects that have a really positive impact on people's mental well-being. So things like

workshops for educators, they do some amazing work with mind, working with young people in particular,

and they fund community mental well-being projects. So they're the perfect partner for our

podcast in general and for this week in particular.

So we're going to start this week's podcast and you'll hear me interviewing Ben Levinson.

Ben is the head teacher of a primary school with 600 pupils in East London.

And he's had to manage all the transition for both his staff, his teachers, his parents and his kids. It's been a phenomenal task,

but he's definitely somebody who's up for it. And there's so much to learn from him. And it's so

insightful just to get a window into somebody else's world. So I really hope you enjoy the

conversation. I'm fortunate and we're fortunate as a school that kind of well-being, emotional health, mental health has absolutely been a core part of what we've done, really ever since I got there six years ago.

But certainly over the last few years, that's been a core part of what we've done as a school.

We talked about focusing on now.

You know, I think there was a lot of both focusing forward and focusing backward and throughout this process.

So that idea of focusing on what is going on today, tomorrow, was really important.

...