ITV launched a new initiative from the UK’s most recognised mental health campaign, Britain Get Talking. The broadcaster set out to encourage every school in the country to set a different kind of homework ahead of World Mental Health Day as what is on our minds can be the hardest subject.

This homework task came at a time when we’ve never needed it more — a cost of living crisis, a pandemic and troubling world events all have a negative impact on our children’s mental health like never before. In fact, mental health has declined in almost 40% of schoolchildren. Our homework task was simple - just a conversation about what’s on your mind.

To promote this message further a short film was released featuring children from across Britain, sending a powerful rallying cry to the adults in their lives: encouraging them to “do their homework and get talking.”

This World Mental Health Day, we worked with 1000s of schools around Britain to set a different kind of homework: getting kids to open up about the hardest subjects on their mind.

This homework task comes at a time when we’ve never needed it more — a cost of living crisis, a pandemic and troubling world events have all had a negative impact on our children’s mental health like never before. In fact, mental health has declined in almost 40% of schoolchildren. Our homework task was simple - not maths, not science - just a conversation about what’s on your mind.

Kids all over Britain are undergoing a mental health crisis - exacerbated by global issues like the climate crisis, wars and inflation. In fact, mental health has declined in almost 40% of schoolchildren.

Many parents try to shield their kids from these difficult world subjects - in an attempt to protect them.

After all, in their eyes, these are grown-up issues, and kids should really just be focusing on school and homework.

But our research shows kids in primary school are already worrying about these issues - and their parents’ silence only exacerbates their concerns.

Upon learning that most kids are more likely to discuss these issues in playgrounds and classrooms rather than at home, we realised we needed to take these conversations from school into the family space.

And there was one mechanism perfectly suited to do that - homework.

This task spanned a wide variety of touch points - rolling out a real piece of homework across thousands of British schools.

We created a physical homework task in collaboration with a child psychologist and the teaching community, encouraging young people to have a chat with an adult they trust about their worries. We created assembly films which were broadcast across schools, who then completed the tasks in class and at home.

We created advertising, promos and print which showcased the issues - and a one-hour segment of live programming, featuring Susanna Reid and the Martin Lewis Money Show - where viewers could dial in around their issues.

Almost 2000 schools signed up to the campaign.

1.2M households did the homework (an adult doing the homework with the child)

7 million people took part in the campaign in some shape or form, and 2 out every 3 people who saw the campaign took action.

98% of schools say they'd run Homework again.

Our live programming was viewed by over 2 Million people.