Mental Health And Wellbeing at Hodge Clough Primary School

 

Hodge Clough Primary School has an important role to play in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our pupils, by developing approaches tailored to the particular needs of our pupils.

All schools are under a statutory duty to promote the welfare of their pupils, which includes: preventing impairment of children’s health or development, and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes. Full details are set out in Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance.

Early intervention to identify issues and provide effective support is crucial.

Our role in supporting and promoting mental health and wellbeing can be summarised as:  

Prevention:

• Creating a safe and calm environment where mental health problems are less likely.
• Improving the mental health and wellbeing of the whole school population.
• Equipping pupils to be resilient so that they can manage the normal stress of life effectively.

This will include teaching pupils about mental wellbeing through the curriculum and reinforcing this teaching through school activities and ethos.

Identification:

• Recognising emerging issues as early and accurately as possible.
• Early support: helping pupils to access evidence based early support and interventions.
• Access to specialist support: working effectively with external agencies to provide swift access or referrals to specialist support and treatment.

 

There are two key elements that can enable us to reliably identify children at risk of mental health problems.

• Effective use of data so that changes in pupils’ patterns of attainment, attendance or behaviour are noticed and can be acted upon.
• An effective pastoral system so that at least one member of staff knows every pupil well and has received training to spot where negative or unusual behaviour may have a root cause that needs addressing.

Where necessary, additional support and intervention will be given to develop the emotional health and mental wellbeing of the child.

When we suspect that a pupil is having mental health difficulties, we look at putting support in place, using the graduated response process:

• An assessment is used to establish a clear analysis of the pupil’s needs.
• A plan to set out how the pupil will be supported.
• Action to provide that support which are reviewed regularly.

Over the academic year 2018 a Mental Health policy for Hodge Clough Primary was initially devised which encompassed our vision as well as an initial action plan which identifies targets and processes for the forthcoming years. Mental Health and Wellbeing continue to be a priority throughout the 2024 anD 2025 school year and will remain as a key focus whilst we support children, their families and staff as we experience the challenging times we find ourselves living through.

 

Please note - if you are concerned about the mental health and wellbeing of your child please speak to your child's class teacher in the first instance.

 

Mental Health and Well-being Policy final

[pdf 315KB]