"Over the course of their education, children spend over 7,800 hours at school.  With such a huge amount of time spent in the classroom, schools provide an ideal environment for promoting good emotional wellbeing and identifying early behaviour changes and signs of mental distress. The social and emotional skills, knowledge and behaviours that young people learn in the classroom can help them to build resilience and set the pattern for how they will manage their mental health throughout their lives.  Emotional wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success and satisfaction in later life. Evidence shows that mental health and wellbeing programmes in schools, can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. Wellbeing provision in schools can also lead to reductions in classroom misbehaviour and bullying."

Young Minds

 

 

 

At Brierley Forest, we are committed to supporting the emotional health and wellbeing of all our

pupils. 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 just as important as our physical health and this is everybody’s business, we all have a

role to play.

 

At our school, we aim to:

• Promote pupils to understand their emotions and feelings better.
• Help pupils feel comfortable sharing any concerns or worries.
• Help pupils socially to form and maintain relationships.
• Promote self-esteem and encourage pupils to be confident.
• Support pupils to develop emotional resilience.

 

Levels of support:

• Whole School approach - To meet the needs of all our pupils through our overall ethos and our wider curriculum.  
• Additional support - For those who may have short term needs and those who may have been made vulnerable by life experiences such as bereavement.
• Targeted support - For pupils who need more differentiated support and resources, specific targeted interventions or referrals to outside agencies.

 

Tools we use to identify and support: 

• Wellbeing questionnaires are delivered to pupils termly. Outcomes from this will be shared with staff and help to develop an action plan.

• All staff are responsible for identifying and sharing wellbeing issues with the appropriate bodies.

This year we were able to achieve the Altogether United Against Bullying Silver award. 

Pupil Wellbeing Council

In each of the classes at school we now have 2 pupil wellbeing leads who will help support staff across school and provide peer support.

 

These children will shortly be receiving training for their role and will be holding an assembly within school to promote this.

 

Keep an eye out for updates!

As part of Anti-Bullying Week 2019 the whole school created their own posters/leaflets all about what bullying and being a good friend is. These included tips of what we should do if we were being bullied.

Here are a selection from across the school: