Mental Health and Wellbeing
At Gaskell Community Primary School:
- We value the importance of having positive Mental Health and Wellbeing.
- We understand that emotional health and wellbeing plays a fundamental role in the lives of our children, staff and parents/carers.
- We understand poor Mental Health undermines educational attainment and personal achievement.
- We actively promote activities to support our pupils during their time at school.
- We understand that Mental Health is the responsibility of everyone in our school community and encourage people to talk openly around the subject.
Why is the Mental Wellbeing of our Children and staff important?
Being mentally healthy during childhood means reaching developmental and emotional milestones and learning healthy social skills and how to cope when there are problems. Mentally healthy children have a positive quality of life and can function well at home, in school, and in their communities.
CDC 2021
Schools have an important role to play in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of their pupils, by developing approaches tailored to the particular needs of their pupils. All schools are under a statutory duty to promote the welfare of their pupils, which includes: preventing impairment of children’s health or development, and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes.
Early intervention to identify issues and provide effective support is crucial. The school role in supporting and promoting mental health and wellbeing can be summarised as:
- Prevention: creating a safe and calm environment where mental health problems are less likely, improving the mental health and wellbeing of the whole school population, and equipping pupils to be resilient so that they can manage the normal stress of life effectively. This will include teaching pupils about mental wellbeing through the curriculum and reinforcing this teaching through school activities and ethos;
- Identification: recognising emerging issues as early and accurately as possible;
- Early support: helping pupils to access evidence based early support and interventions; and • Access to specialist support: working effectively with external agencies to provide swift access or referrals to specialist support and treatment. www.gov.uk 2018
What do we do to promote positive Mental Health and Wellbeing?
We have created an environment that is calm and purposeful and have different outdoor spaces we can use. Outdoor learning and exercise is a high priority as many links have been made between outdoor learning and positive mental health.
We teach the children about their self-identity, their role in school and society and how they can tackle issues that affect them in and out of school.
We are developing a collection of regular mindfulness activities to be used in classes along with stories and reflections.
Our children have access to a wellbeing mentor, who helps to alleviate any worries or concerns children may have.
Our school also has Child and Adult Mental Health First Aiders, who are there to offer support and guidance for our children, staff and parent/carers.
Our staff also have access to a councillor, who comes into school weekly. Our staff have the option to make an appointment if they believe this will help them overcome any problems and issues they may be facing. This year our staff will also have option of attending weekly Yoga sessions.
Further Information
https://gmmh.nhs.uk/bolton-camhs Children and adolescent mental health service Bolton
https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/your-guide-to-support/guide-to-camhs/ Children and adolescent mental health service
https://www.childline.org.uk/ Child line contact Call 0800 1111
Key Information
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