Wellbeing
Over the course of their education at our school, the children spend over 6,000 hours with us. With such a huge amount of time spent in the classroom, schools provide an ideal environment for promoting good emotional wellbeing and identifying early behaviour changes such as sadness, anxiety, stress etc. The social and emotional skills, knowledge and behaviours that young people learn in the classroom can help them to build resilience and set the pattern for how they will manage their mental health throughout their lives. Emotional wellbeing is a clear indicator of academic achievement, success and satisfaction in later life. Evidence shows that mental health and wellbeing programmes in schools, can lead to significant improvements in children’s mental health, and social and emotional skills. Wellbeing provision in schools can also lead to reductions in classroom misbehaviour and bullying.
At Wimborne First School and Nursery we take emotional health and mental well being very seriously. Every class provides a wide range of activities that promote emotional health and mental wellbeing, including the daily mile, Worry Monsters/Boxes, class and team building activities. We will be building on this through next academic year by creating Learning Rangers - a scheme that will focus on 6 key learning characteristics which will equip children for later life.
From September 2022, we will be creating the role of the Wellbeing Ambassador within Wimborne First School and Nursery.
The role of the Wellbeing Ambassador will be to …
- Spread happiness throughout the school
- To welcome new children and staff to the school
- To be kind, caring and helpful towards others
- To always treat others as you would like to be treated yourself
- To promote the Learning Rangers scheme throughout the school
Mental Health Support Teams in Schools
From September 2022, we are proud to be working with the Dorset Mental Health Support Team who will work in our school each half term supporting children and families who have been identified by the school for support. This is a brilliant opportunity to support children within our school.
MHSTs are working with a small number of schools across these areas to tackle the challenges children and young people experience, by helping them to feel more resilient, arming them with techniques to look after themselves, and strategies to help them cope better with life’s ups and downs. This includes support for things like mild-moderate anxiety or worries, exam stress and friendship issues through 6-8 sessions of low intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LI-CBT), counselling sessions, themed group work or information workshops. We will also be working with transition year groups and training will be provided for the staff also through drop-in sessions.
https://camhsdorset.org/about-camhs/mental-health-support-teams-mhsts#
Other Useful links
https://www.place2be.org.uk/our-services/services-for-schools/mental-health-resources-for-schools/
https://www.mentallyhealthyschools.org.uk/getting-started/primary/