No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
To riff on the 17th Century poem by John Donne, ‘No child is an island’. At least, this is a central thesis underpinning Brown and colleague’s 2025 paper in which they outline an approach to school-based wellbeing programmes that harness young people’s relationships to one another, their school, and their wider community.
The topic of school-based programmes to support children’s wellbeing is a timely one given evidence that 1 in 4 young people in England has a probable mental health disorder (NHS England, 2024). This rise in the rate of mental health problems have led to calls from policymakers to embed mental health support within schools.
However, the determinants of mental health problems are complex and multifaceted, operating across multiple systems within and outside schools themselves. For example, we know late childhood and early adolescence is a period of social reorientation in which young people come to align their identity with their peer group (read Emily’s blog to learn more) and programmes that support young people build peer relationships can improve their wellbeing (Veenstra & Laninga-Wijnen, 2022).
Cultural identity – and the extent to which this is embraced or minoritised – can also influence mental health outcomes. In this paper, Brown and colleagues (2025) introduce their ‘Connected Belonging’ model, an approach to school wellbeing strategies that places less emphasis on individual skills and highlights young people’s intersectional identities.
Relationships are key in adolescence, and Brown et al.’s (2025) Connected Belonging model place this at the centre.
Methods
To introduce and support their model, the authors narratively summarise four studies they previously conducted before outlining how these findings were used to develop the Connected Belongings model. It is important to note that the model is predominantly based on the findings from these four studies, which include:
- A rigorous, large-scale review of education policy across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, providing an overview of current practice.
- A qualitative, photo-narrative study asking pupils’ perspectives on school-based mental health programmes, conducted across seven schools in South East England.
- An Australian-based study evaluating school-based approaches to wellbeing, with themes derived in collaboration with the young people taking part in the interviews.
- An evaluation of young people at risk of leaving education, and a trial of a co-designed intervention to support these pupils
However, Brown and colleagues do also draw on a wide range of literature that corroborates their findings.
Results
The Connected Belonging model puts the young person, and their individual identity, at the heart of the approach to school-based wellbeing programmes. This core component is surrounded by material, relational and subjective dimensions that can either promote or hinder wellbeing. The model is explicitly contrasted against existing approaches to school wellbeing programmes that focus on teaching young people skills and competencies, such as displaying ‘grit’ in the face of pressures within their lives.
Rather, by improving young people’s relationships to the systems that surround and shape them, the Connected Belonging model takes a more holistic approach to young people’s wellbeing in schools.
So, what are the dimensions of the Connected Belonging model?
- School identity, which describes the extent to which a young person feels part of their school community. To effectively support young people’s school identity, educational institutions should help young people develop a positive identity within their studies regardless of learning styles, aptitudes, abilities and interests.
- Cultural identity, which is young people’s sense of their relationships to their background and culture(s). Schools can play an active role in nurturing this feature of young people’s identity by showing understanding and sensitivity towards different practices, beliefs and values, while ensuring these are not discriminated against by staff or students.
- Local community identity, defined as young people’s place within the area they live in, but outside of their immediate home environment. The extent to which schools engage with the local community, such as partnering with community groups or teaching local history, can be both a facilitator and barrier to this aspect of young people’s identity.
- Place attachment, which unlike the other domains described so far, refers to young people’s ability to identify a physical location or space they feel safe or feel that they belong in, and is particularly timely in context of the decline in ‘third spaces’ (Finlay et al., 2020). Schools can themselves be these places for young people.
- Social identity and the intersectional characteristics that reflect that young person, including their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, diagnoses and life experiences (e.g., being care-experienced). Schools’ roles in supporting the inclusion of all pupils can mitigate the multiplicative barriers faced by those from minoritized backgrounds.
- Peer group identity, describing young people’s connectedness to their peer group, and may be supported by initiatives to reduce victimisation such as bullying prevention programmes.
- Citizenship identity, which is the extent to which young people identify themselves as national and global citizens. The degree to which schools support young people’s engagement with national and global issues can influence this domain of young people’s identity.
The Connected Belonging model is contrasted against existing approaches in schools that focus on ‘grit’.
Conclusion
As a model, Connected Belonging places the young people at the centre of a complex environment. Supporting young people to navigate these different domains is proposed as a new and effective approach to school-based wellbeing programmes.
However, while the Connected Belonging model proposes these domains are relevant to all young people, it does not ascribe the relative importance of these domains and acknowledges these may vary across young people. For example, in the third of the four studies used to derive this model, Aboriginal young people described their perspectives on identity formation and placed greater emphasis on place attachment to nature compared to young people from the UK.
While this approach may support the adaptability of the model to young people in different contexts, it may make it challenging to evaluate which components of the model improve wellbeing, and whether each component contributes equally to changes in wellbeing.
Schools can foster young people’s relationships to different parts of their identity. This is an approach that schools may want to consider adopting in relation to wellbeing.
Strengths and limitations
This paper is a comprehensive outline of a novel approach to school-based wellbeing. It has a notable strength of drawing on separate bodies of evidence to substantiate the model, including a large policy review and qualitative evidence from international sources (which included Aboriginal young people who are typically underrepresented in studies). This strength means that evidence is triangulated across different sources and reduces the likelihood the model is biased to one particular context or group of young people. A further advantage is that wellbeing is not conceptualised as something limited to schools alone, and rather schools play one (important!) part in young people’s complex lives.
However, these strengths should be considered in context of some notable limitations. First, the model is derived from only four studies, despite there being a vast literature evaluating school-based approaches to mental health and wellbeing. This relatively narrow focus may miss alternative approaches to school-based mental health, such as those that do not rely on whole-school approaches.
In addition, no formal method was specified when describing how the findings from these four studies were synthesised to develop the model, which limits reproducibility and does not provide information about the extent to which the model integrated the full data from these studies.
Further, the paper lacks a description of how this model might be formally tested against existing approaches to school-based wellbeing. A description of the quantitative or qualitative methods that would provide an empirical test of this model would be helpful to test whether this model does improve students’ wellbeing compared to existing approaches.
It would also be interesting to consider the extent to which this model might generalize to other, non-mainstream school settings, such as Pupil Referral Units which are settings for students who need additional support due to behavioural issues. Whether young people with behavioural issues consider these domains important to their wellbeing would be an interesting avenue to explore.
The Connected Belonging model is predominantly based on four studies, and it is unclear in the paper how these findings were synthesised to develop the model.
Implications for practice
The Connected Belonging model offers an interesting alternate approach to supporting young people’s wellbeing within the school environment and is an important contribution to the literature given the role that schools now play in early intervention and prevention.
However, further testing and research is needed to better understand how this model might fit into different schooling contexts, and its potential to be utilised within research, policy and practice. To do this, researchers could conduct research within and between schools to test associations between domain strength and positive mental health outcomes, identifying the strength of impact and which domains seem to be most important in different contexts.
Based on the findings from further research, policymakers may need to consider moving beyond narratives focused on individual resilience towards approaches that focus on relationships and identity. However, if this is done, the change will need to be informed by engagement with stakeholders, including young people, parents, teachers, clinicians, and researchers.
Finally, teachers and school staff may want to consider identifying which domains of identity are encouraged in their settings, and which might be further supported.
Should policy switch from an approach focused on individual resilience towards one that centres identity and relationships? More research is needed to find out.
Statement of interests
Alex Lloyd – None.
Edited by
Dr Nina Higson-Sweeney
Links
Primary paper
Ceri Brown, Alison Douthwaite, Michael Donnelly, & Marnee Shay (2025). Connected Belonging: A relational and identity‐based approach to schools’ role in promoting child wellbeing. British Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4112
Other references
Donne, J. (1624). Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.
Finlay, J., Esposito, M., Kim, M. H., Gomez-Lopez, I., & Clarke, P. (2019). Closure of ‘third places’? Exploring potential consequences for collective health and wellbeing. Health & Place, 60, 102225. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2019.102225
Stapley, E. (2018). Peer influence and risk taking behaviour during adolescence. The Mental Elf.
Veenstra, R., & Laninga-Wijnen, L. (2022). Peer network studies and interventions in adolescence. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 157-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.09.015
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