Mental Health and Wellbeing
Mental Health and Well-being at Normanby Primary School
At Normanby Primary, we take mental health very seriously. Wellbeing is at the forefront of our school’s vision of leading a mentally healthy 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.
It is important to provide an effective and enjoyable teaching and learning environment, where children and young people flourish. We aim to promote the mental and physical health and emotional well-being for our staff, parents and pupils at every opportunity. Therefore, positive well-being is integrated within school’s curriculum and promoting good mental health is a priority.
At Normanby, we have a number of strategies and services in place to utilise and work with; some of which are as follows:
- A dedicated school Educational Mental Health Practitioner through ‘Inside Out’
- ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant)
- Drawing and Talking Therapy
- Time 4 U counselling Service
- Circle time approaches or ‘circle of friends’ activities.
- Managing feelings resources e.g. ‘worry boxes’ and ‘worry eaters’
- ‘Tell the Teacher’ boxes
- Pupils trained as HeadStarters
- Primary Group Work/Mental health and wellbeing groups
- Therapeutic activities including art, lego and relaxation and mindfulness techniques.
- Early Help Intervention Practitioner – Miss Lawrence
It is important to us to:
- Help children to understand their emotions and feelings better
- Help children feel comfortable sharing any concerns or worries
- Support children to form and maintain healthy relationships
- Promote self-esteem and ensure children know that they count
- Encourage children to be confident and ‘dare to be different’
- Support children to develop emotional resilience and the skills to manage setbacks
HeadStarters
‘We are proud to say that Normanby Primary School is a HeadStart school. A selection of our children have achieved awards to become ‘HeadStarters’ and they work hard to make this a success across our school community. Their vision is to continue with this excellent work by training more children and supporting others.’
What is HeadStart?
The HeadStarters Educational Pathway is provided through the South Tees Public Health HeadStart service who work in partnership with schools to help create lasting, systemic change in the mental health and emotional wellbeing support offered to both students and staff.
HeadStarters is a unique training pathway for young people to increase understanding of mental health while helping to give every young person the tools and abilities to build resilience.
What does HeadStart look like at Normanby Primary School?
Children in KS2 are selected to complete Bronze, Silver and Gold HeadStart awards. This enables and equips them with tools to work with children across all year groups. The work that the HeadStarter children complete has a focus on Mental Health and Wellbeing.
Our Normanby HeadStarters work with children in all year groups on playground areas during allocated lunchtimes. They provide children with regulation tools and a friend to listen/talk to. Our HeadStarters also deliver assemblies to update children in school about any developments to HeadStart.
The children who have achieved their Bronze and Silver awards will now work towards their Gold award by training new HeadStarters across school.
Meet our HeadStarters:
We offer different levels of support:
Universal Support – To meet the needs of all our pupils through our overall ethos and our wider curriculum. For instance, developing resilience for all.
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 or specific targeted interventions such as wellbeing groups or personal mentors
For strategies to help promote positive mental health at home, please follow the links below to some of the websites and organisations we use:
https://www.youngminds.org.uk/
https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-health-development/promoting-mental-health-wellbeing
https://www.place2be.org.uk/our-services/parents-and-carers/supporting-your-child-s-mental-health/
https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-we-do/our-work/well-being
https://www.nhs.uk/every-mind-matters/supporting-others/childrens-mental-health/
Here are the 5 steps to a whole-school approach to children’s mental health and wellbeing by the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families. At Normanby, we are:
