Supporting Positive Mental Health And well-being at trosnant
In the Trosnant Federation and in the wider community we have established partnership working between governors, senior leaders, teachers and all school staff, as well as parents, carers to support the mental health and well-being of all.
What is our approach?
We have worked hard to establish a positive ethos and culture – where everyone feels that they belong. We work together to make sure that the whole school community is welcoming, inclusive and respectful. We work to maximise children’s learning through promoting good mental health and wellbeing across the school – through the curriculum, early support for pupils, staff-pupil relationships, leadership and a commitment from everybody
We have developed the following approach based on the work of www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk
This includes:
Our federation leadership team (governors, a head teacher and senior leaders) that:
- Understands the links between mental health and achievement.
- Champions and supports mental health and wellbeing for children and staff, both strategically and practically as part of improvement planning.
Our staff team committed to helping all children develop the essential social and emotional skills they need to cope effectively with setbacks and remain healthy, through:
- Whole-school and targeted activities and through strengthening broader protective factors which promote children’s resilience and reduce risk factors both in the family, at school and more broadly in the community.
- Day-to-day contact and building healthy and strong protective relationships with children and families.
We also work with a range of stakeholders and our mental health and well-being provision includes:
- An Assistant Head who is our Inclusion Lead and qualified SENCO
- A designated teacher as our designated Mental Health Lead
- A designated teacher for our Looked After Children
- A qualified teacher in charge of SEMH (Social, Emotional and Mental Health) needs
- A team of 7 qualified DSLs (Designated Safeguarding Leads)
- Trained Thrive Practitioners https://www.thriveapproach.com/ and Nurture Trained Staff https://www.nurtureuk.org/ who work with groups and individual children
- A team of ELSAs (Emotional Literacy Support Assistants) https://www.elsanetwork.org
- An enhanced Service Level agreement with the Hampshire Educational Psychology Service https://www.hants.gov.uk/educationandlearning/educationalpsychology
- Two Family Support Workers
- A qualified music therapist
- We are also participating in two local mental health projects working in collaboration with the Hampshire Primary Behaviour Support Service (PBS) https://www.hants.gov.uk/educationandlearning/educationinclusionservice/primarybehaviourservice and local CAMHS (Child and Adolescent mental health Service) https://hampshirecamhs.nhs.uk/
Families can access all our services by contacting our schools in the usual way.
We recognise a whole-school approach to mental health and wellbeing is a process, not a one-off activity. To describe a school as ‘mentally healthy’ involves both planning and ongoing evaluation:
- Identifying and building on the strengths and good practice that already exist which contribute to good mental health in the school.
- Identifying external support and understanding how you might best use, build relationships with, and influence what is available outside the school.
- Consulting with children, staff, parents and carers so that everyone feels committed to positive school mental health and wellbeing.
- Making sure that the mental health and wellbeing of senior leaders, governors, teachers, all school staff and of parents/carers is as important as that of the pupils, and that staff model a positive approach to mental health and wellbeing.
- Encouraging openness in talking about mental health and challenging negative attitudes.
Enhancing pupils’ and staff knowledge about how to maintain good mental health and wellbeing. - Playing a key part in identifying emerging mental health needs of pupils by making sure staff can recognise signs and symptoms of mental health needs and know what to do should they have a concern.
- Referring pupils who need additional help onto health professionals for appropriate specialist support and treatment.
- Having a clear process to follow where a concern is raised about a pupil’s mental health and developing links with specialist mental health services and other local and national support.
- Making sure that children and adults are protected by policies, values and attitudes (including behaviour, bullying, safeguarding and SEND) and feel safe in the school environment and in the wider community.
- Ensuring that what is provided in school dovetails with the particular needs of your children and families.
- Measuring the impact of what we do to promote and support children’s mental health in school.
Children’s Services and Public Health, Hampshire County Council working jointly with the NHS have produced
Starting Well: Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health Strategy for Children and Young People 2019-24.
Emotional wellbeing is an area of concern within education settings. We know that the long-term consequences of inadequate support for children and young people with emotional difficulties can be enormous and have lifelong consequences. The strategy seeks to address this through six priority areas for action:
Reducing rates of self-harm
Whole school/educational settings approach to mental health
Support for good mental health of parents
Supporting mental health of vulnerable children and young people
Improvement of service provision – prevention, early intervention and referral pathways
Children and young people’s emotional wellbeing and mental health is everybody’s business