Mental Health and Wellbeing
At Westoning Lower School, we are committed to supporting the health and well-being of our pupils and staff to ensure that the school is a community where everyone feels able to thrive. Positive mental well-being is essential if children and young people are to flourish and lead fulfilling lives. At our school, we know that everyone experiences life challenges that can make us vulnerable and at times anyone may need additional emotional support. We take the view that positive mental health is everybody’s business and that we all have a role to play.
At Westoning Lower School we:
- Promote our school values and encourage a sense of belonging
- help children to understand their emotions and feelings better
- help children feel comfortable sharing any concerns or worries
- help children socially to form and maintain relationships
- promote self-esteem and opportunities to reflect
- ensure children have opportunities to participate in decision-making
- enable access to appropriate support that meets their needs
- help children to develop emotional resilience and to manage setbacks
Our role in school is to ensure that children are able to manage times of change and stress, and that they are supported to reach their potential or access help when they need it. Children are taught when to seek help, what help is available, and the likely outcome of seeking support so that they have the confidence and knowledge for themselves or others. We also have a role to ensure that children learn about what they can do to maintain positive mental health, what affects their mental health and how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues.
At WLS, we believe that teaching about mental health and emotional wellbeing as part of a comprehensive PSHE curriculum is vital. PSHE is central to the curriculum across the whole school and assists pupils to cope with the changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world, manage transitions and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities. The concepts covered in PSHE include keeping safe and managing risk, identity, equality, managing feelings and emotions, relationships, change, resilience and being healthy, which includes physical, mental, emotional and social well-being. We aim to promote pupils’ wellbeing through an understanding of their own and others’ emotions and the development of healthy coping strategies.
Good mental health and wellbeing is just as important as good physical health. Like physical health, mental health can range across a spectrum from healthy to unwell; it can fluctuate on a daily basis and change over time.
At WLS we offer different levels of support:
Universal needs - the needs of all children and young people and opportunities to develop resilience
Additional needs - the needs of those made vulnerable at some time by life experiences
Targeted needs - the needs of those children and young people who need differentiated support and resources
Specialist needs - those children and young people who are having specialist intervention by trained professionals.
We have a Well-being Team made up of the following staff: Mrs Boyle (Senior Mental Health lead), Mrs Jackson, Mrs Dean, Mrs Debock, Mrs Hocking, and Miss Vincent.
Useful Links
https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/supporting-others/childrens-mental-health/