Mental Health & Wellbeing

“A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person.

And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints….” Pope Benedict XVI, 2010

The emotional development of children at Holy Family is of paramount importance. Our curriculum is designed to enhance emotional and mental health & wellbeing alongside physical health, spiritual, social, moral and cultural development.

At Holy Family we are driving forward a whole school approach, where mental health weaves through all aspects of school life and all stakeholders are supported. Our strategic approach focusses on the early identification of need and preventative provision. We use the Thrive Framework developed by CAMHS to determine the correct level of provision according to individual needs and have established strong connections with outside professionals to support our parents, pupils and staff.

The Headteacher oversees the mental health & wellbeing of all children and staff. Mrs Clark (Inclusion & intervention teacher) is our designated Senior Mental Health Lead. Mrs Clark works alongside our Governor for Mental Health & Wellbeing (Lisa Taylor), Mrs Ferryman (Senco) and Mrs Tindall (Inclusion Teacher) to ensure adequate support, planning and resources are in place. All staff are empowered to support pupil wellbeing through an informed and consistent approach. Holy Family is a trauma-informed school, as all staff have completed training. Our staff have received training in how to stay Mentally Healthy and have free access to the mental health & wellbeing app 'Head Space'. Holy family has signed up to the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter, to demonstrate our commitment to supporting staff wellbeing and strategies to support staff mental health are regularly implemented.

Trauma Informed Schools - Hunters Bar Infant School

Mrs Clark carries out regular Whole School Mental Health Audits via the 'Bounce Together' platform. This data is used to carefully monitor the well-being of all children, as well as to rigorously monitor the effectiveness of wellbeing interventions. The Bounce Together results are reported back to the SLT and staff teams on a weekly basis and are also monitored by class teachers. The Mental Health interventions currently offered in school are Drawing & Talking, Emotional Literacy Support (ELSA), Zones of Regulation and Pastoral Mentoring. We have also recently trained two members of staff in Rainbows Bereavement support. We have appointed 12 mental health & wellbeing ambassadors from Year 5 & 6 who lead their peers in the best ways to stay well and happy. Embedded initiatives including 'Mindfulness Mondays', 'Wellbeing Wednesdays' and Children's Mental Health Week are led by Mrs Clark and our ambassadors. We have regular performances in school to promote wellbeing.

Please contact Mrs Clark or Mrs Ferryman if you are concerned about your child's Mental Health or wellbeing or the Mental Health of a member of your family.

Elsa Support

During 2020, Mr Tindall raised the profile of children's mental health by founding a charity called 'Bee-lieve Foundation' and embarking on a Marathon Walk from Westminster Cathedral to Holy Family on Saturday 19th September. Alongside raising the profile, the aim is to establish a fund to provide ongoing support to children and families in need. For further details of this initiative, please click on the link below to read all about the mission and work of Bee-lieve Foundation:

https://www.beelievefoundation.co.uk/

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Thanks to the support of The Matthew Hackney Foundation, we currently also offer counselling sessions to individual children during school time. For more information about this local charity, please click on the link below:

https://www.thematthewhackneyfoundation.co.uk/

We also work closely with the Eikon charity who provide individual and group emotional wellbeing sessions. Further information about their work can be found via the web link below:

https://eikon.org.uk/

Tap Thanking App

The mental health and wellbeing of our staff and children is one of the 3 key pillars of the culture of Holy Family School. As a school we are going to be using TAP (Thank And Praise), a free-to-use social thanking platform, which enables our staff and parents to show their appreciation to all those working at our organisation.

The free-to-use TAP thanking platform allows people (including our staff) to:

Thank and Praise our staff and organisation publicly on our Digital Thanking Wall via: www.thankandpraise.com/holy-family
Or via TAP’s App which is available in the App Stores – just search for ‘TAP Thank and Praise’.

If you’d like to show your appreciation to our school staff, please visit our Thanking Wall via: www.thankandpraise.com/holy-family

For some excellent videos to help you support your child's mental health at home, please click on the link below that will take you to the website of Children's Mental Health charity Place 2 Be:

https://parentingsmart.place2be.org.uk/?_ga=2.186501161.1204113330.1646914063-317582136.1646914063

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