Mental Health and Wellbeing
Our School
At Jesse Gray Primary School our aim is to care for and develop the whole child
educationally, emotionally, morally and physically. In our role as educators, as well as caring for children’s education, we also care for their mental health and wellbeing and feel that it is essential to provide children with information to enable them to make life long, well informed decisions about their diet, health and positive life choices.
We aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing of every member of our school
community and recognise how important mental health and wellbeing is to our lives, as well as our physical health. We recognise that children’s mental health and overall wellbeing can affect their learning and achievement.
A key aspect of our role in school is to ensure that children are able to manage times of
change and stress, and that they are supported to reach their potential or access help
when they need it. We also have a role to ensure that children learn about what they can
do to maintain positive mental health, what can affect their mental health, how they can
help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and where they can go if they
need help and support.
Positive wellbeing is promoted through the curriculum and all school activities. Through a carefully planned approach to PSHE our pupils are helped to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy, independent lives, and to become resilient, informed and responsible citizens.
In addition, whole school approaches such as assemblies are used to further develop the pupils’ knowledge of strategies to support themselves. Whole school events are held including Children’s Mental Health Week in February and World Mental Health Day (celebrated through ‘Hello Yellow’) in October. During these events, the focus is on mindfulness and resilience with the purpose of teaching children strategies for dealing with anxiety and copying with changes.
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, our values focus of 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 nurture groups, pastoral interventions or outside providers support.
How we support Mental Health and Wellbeing
At Jesse Gray, we take a whole school approach to promoting positive mental health, aiming to help children become more resilient, happy and successful and to work in a pro-active way to avoid problems arising. We do this by:
Creating and applying consistent ethos, policies, values behaviours that support mental
health and resilience, and which everyone understands.
Using research backed strategies such as the ‘5 Ways to Wellbeing’
Our bespoke Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) curriculum assists pupils to
cope with the changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world, manage transitions
and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities. The concepts covered in PSHE include identity, managing feelings and emotions, growing and changing, relationships, change, resilience and being healthy (which includes physical, emotional and social wellbeing).
Helping children to develop social relationships, support each other and seek help when they need it.
Enrichment activities for the children to experience including: sports provision, music
tuition, STEM projects and working with local artists.
Promoting self-esteem and ensuring children understand their importance in the World.
Helping children to be resilient learners and to manage setbacks.
Teaching children social and emotional skills and an awareness of mental health. We
include World Mental Health Day (Hello Yellow) and Children’s Mental Health Week in
the school calendar and plan activities for the whole school community.
We offer Nurture Provision through our ELSA for children who experience any number of things including domestic violence, bereavement, anxiety and any other life experiences that may affect their emotional wellbeing.
To support children’s social and emotional development, and their wellbeing we offer
a range of in-school and after-school clubs – all with a view to increasing the range of
experiences that children have, enabling them to make informed choices for adult life.
Activities are designed to be fun and cater for a wide variety of interests.
Identifying children who have mental health challenges and planning support to meet their needs, including working with specialist services, parents and carers.
Supporting and training staff to develop their knowledge and understanding of mental
health and wellbeing.
Parents and Carers
Parents or carers should approach their child/children’s class teacher or the school
SENDCO if they have any mental health concerns. In addition to offering universal support within school, we may also discuss with you additional support mechanisms available to you from the following agencies:
CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service)
Mental Health Support Team
Healthy Families Team
NottAlone
Educational Psychologists
