Mental health and wellbeing

Mental Health and wellbeing is a key area of focus at Locking Primary School. We look after our children, our staff and our parents.

We do this by:

• teaching children about how to keep themselves mentally healthy through our curriculum, PHSE lessons and our pastoral interventions. We use whole school assemblies to talk about self regulation and pupils have vocabulary to understand what happens to our brain and bodies when we feel stressed or unsafe.
• dedicated and trained staff to support children who are worried about their mental health and services that we can refer children to for further support and help with their emotional and mental health.
• staff complete wellbeing questionnaires each July identifying pupils they are concerned about, this may be issues such as  low self esteem, struggling with sleep and pupils that use negative self talk. This information helps form the Mental Health Strategy for the follwoing year. 
• Miss Ledbury has 1-1 check-ins with pupils identified and works with outside agencies.
• We have a staff wellbeing board and offer staff a safe space to talk. 

Meet the Mental Heath and Wellbeing team:

      Miss Sharon Ledbury is our Mental Health Champion and Lead 

We have a wider staff team trained in Mental Health First Aid

   Helen Morrison, Sarah Forbes, Elizabeth Kelson

We recognise that children need to know that they matter, that we value them, that their voice can be heard, that we can help them, that we will be here for them. We acknowledge them every day through greetings, a gesture, a nod, a smile and a conversation.

We talk about the power of 'I know', 'I appreciate', 'I understand' - to children some things are huge, and we need to recognise this and affirm their feelings for that thing - be it a scratch they have, a funny feeling in their tummy, a sad feeling because of a falling out, a sigh because they cannot do something - we need to set aside our 'rush' to teach and ensure progress and attainment and ensure that we have done our best to support our children to be ready to learn - emotionally available. We do this at all levels - leadership to office staff, teachers to midday supervisors.

We do not avoid talking about having healthy minds – we use Brain Breaks throughout the day and we learn about the brain and how it works.

We do not know everything... if you have any skills that you could share in this area or any ideas or suggestions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Click here for the Mental Health Padlet - there a range of links which may be useful for you at home!

Here is a link for you to access Young Minds. It is an organisation for children and has a helpline for parents. You can contact them via, webchat, email and phone. 

Kooth is an organisation set up for children. It delivers free online support for young people delivered by qualified counsellors via chat-based services. It is all monitored and very safe for children to access. 

https://www.kooth.com/

For more useful information follow the links below:

• Parent Advice from Place2Be Mental Health Support
• It's ok to talk about Self Harm