At Grove Lea Primary we have always believed in a holistic approach when providing an education for your child. For a number of years we have provided the children with a mental health and wellbeing curriculum which has mainly been delivered through themed mornings each half term. For children to have the best possible chances they need to be safe and happy. It is that simple.
The importance of good mental health and well being has never been more important. Below we have listed some really useful websites for you access should you wish to or want to. We hope you find them useful.
Mental health and well being will be at the top of our curriculum agenda. If you ever have concerns over your child or someone close to them then I urge you to inform the class teacher so we can do our best for them in school. It is crucial we continue to build strong relationships with you as parents and us as a school.
I am fortunate to have already invested in training for my staff in mental health and wellbeing. We also have our Learning Mentor Miss Litchfield who has access to further resources and programmes should we need it. I, myself completed my Masters last year in promoting mental health within the primary curriculum so please be reassured we will do everything we can to support you.
Families and young people are now able to self-refer to CAMHS (child and adolescent mental health services) through the single point of access (SPA) . You don’t need a GP or school to do this for you. The SPA number is 01977 735865, Monday to Friday, 9:00am – 5:00pm
Child and adolescent mental health service (CAMHS) in Wakefield
If you need to ask any questions please do. This can be done using personal message on class dojo.
Mental Health and Wellbeing Team
Mental health and Well Being Lead: Mrs S Henshall
Special Educational Needs Coordinator: Mrs A Dransfield
Learning Mentor: Miss E Litchfield
Named Governor: Mrs A Buckler
At Inspire supporting the mental health and well-being of our pupils is one of our Trust priorities.
One of the impacts of the pandemic has been the increase in number of children in Primary with social and emotional issues.
Research shows that there are also more children and staff struggling with day to day mental health and well-being issues.
We are committed to improving education around mental health & well-being in all our schools within our curriculum and also ensure that there is a well-being focus in policy and practice across the Trust schools.
INCLUSION & WELL-BEING TEAM
As part of our commitment to put inclusion at the heart of our offer for our children we have developed an Inclusion Team within the Trust.
Their role is to:
Inclusion Team Members
To support leaders and staff in schools we have introduced a designated Mental Health & Wellbeing lead in all of our schools.
PURPOSE OF THE ROLE
WHAT IS MENTAL HEALTH & WELL-BEING?
We all have mental health. Your mental health affects how you feel, think and act. It refers to your emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. Your mental health can change on a daily basis and over time, and can be affected by a range of factors.
It’s important to look after your mental health, as you would look after your physical health. Your state of wellbeing affects how you cope with stress, relate to others and make choices. It also plays a part in your relationships with your family, community, colleagues and friends.
At INSPIRE we are committed to promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing to all students, their families and members of staff and governors. Our open culture allows students’ voices to be heard, and through the use of effective policies and procedures we ensure a safe and supportive environment for all affected – both directly and indirectly – by mental health issues.
We have developed a Trust wide policy which is a guide for all staff – including non-teaching and governors – outlining INSPIRE’s approach to promoting mental health and emotional wellbeing.
How else do we support Mental health & well-being across our Trust?
When children and young people have good levels of wellbeing it helps them to:
When children and young people look after their mental health and develop their coping skills it can help them to boost their resilience, self-esteem and confidence. It can also help them learn to manage their emotions, feel calm, and engage positively with their education – which can, in turn, improve their academic attainment.
At our schools we believe in nurturing the WHOLE child- good mental health & self esteem go hand in hand with better academic achievement and our aim is to help ALL our children to achieve their potential.
We recognise the family plays a key role in influencing children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing; we will work in partnership with parents and carers to promote emotional health and wellbeing by:
We have an open-door policy which means we want families to feel they can come and talk to us about anything. Our Pastoral teams across the Trust are highly trained and knowledgeable and can signpost families to the support they need.
Well-being provision across our Trust is a thread running through everything we do.
Our PSHCE and RSE curriculums have been developed to be progressive and cover aspects of mental health & well-being across different strands. Mental health & well-being is not only taught and discussed in these lessons though as we see it as a fundamental part of the skills and knowledge we teach our children.
Assemblies are carefully planned to ensure mental health is something we talk about all the time- constantly building on children’s skills, giving them tools to help them manage their own feelings and emotional health.
We have also developed representation and diversity across our curriculum areas to further develop mental health & wellbeing.
Most of our schools have well-being check ins daily with all their pupils, and there has been heavy investment in providing all schools with books to support the teaching of areas of well-being.
The Department for Education has developed a Wellbeing Charter for all staff working within education settings in England and sets out the commitments to protect and promote the wellbeing of education staff.
At Inspire we recognise the value of promoting wellbeing across all of our academies and have signed up to the charter.
However, as a trust, we go want to go further than this, and have set up a working party to support well-being across the Trust and to develop our own Well-being charter which will go above and beyond the DfE charter.
We are also committed to reducing workload for our staff. We have started to develop our own Trust curriculum complete with resources to reduce the time teachers need to spend on planning and also allow our teachers to take their PPA time at home. We are driving down unnecessary paperwork and tasks across our Trust to support staff further.
We carry out two staff well-being surveys every year and act on feedback – we value the opinions and ideas we get from our staff team.
We held our first Trust wide conference in May 2023 bringing staff from across the Trust to celebrate our achievements and this is now planned to be an annual event.
