Health and Wellbeing

Mental Health And Wellbeing Overview St Marys

At St Mary’s, we believe it is important to support every individual who is involved with our School. We believe that good pastoral support focuses on nurturing the individual needs of each person.

All staff consistently model to students how to look after themselves and others; encouraging them to seek help, support or advice whenever they need it. Pastoral care underpins personal development and we know from experience that with outstanding pastoral care, students feel they belong and their self-esteem is able to flourish because they feel valued and cared for.

Supporting the pastoral needs of pupils sometimes involves working with external agencies. In these situations, we ensure that confidential, professional, non-judgmental and sensitive service is provided.

The role of the Pastoral Support Team:

  • To support and work alongside parents in addressing pastoral concerns impacting on their child’s learning and development.
  • To work with staff in ensuring good pupil support and build upon the caring and respectful relationships that exist between staff, pupils and families.
  • To provide specialist counselling to support individual children; listening and talking to children who may need support in a variety of pastoral issues, for example, self-esteem and confidence, bereavement, managing feelings, anxieties/worries, separation and developing social and friendships skills.
  • Responding to situations as they arise within school.
  • Meeting with parents/carers to discuss issues relating to their child.
  • To ‘signpost’ families to outside services for appropriate provision and support.

The pastoral support team are:

Mr J. O’Connor, Mrs M. Steeper, Ms C. Queens and Mrs K. Tuff

Resilience is really important. Watch this video to learn 5 ways to be resilient everyday!

Children’s Mental Health Week 2021 – a message from our Royal Patron

Watch our Royal Patron HRH The Duchess of Cambridge’s video message to mark the start of the Children’s Mental Health Week.

Growing Together | Children’s Mental Health Week 2022

Safer Internet Day 2022 – Virtual Assembly for 7-11s

Safer Internet Day – Exploring respect and relationships online’.

 

Children’s Health and Well-being

Our emotional health and well-being, is all about our ability to react to life through our thoughts and feelings. At Saint Mary’s, we support the emotional health and well-being of all the children with-in our school. We know that everyone experiences lots of different emotions, but at school we want to make positive mental health everyone’s business and we know that everyone has a role to play. We learn about health and well-being through our lessons, we talk about it in our assemblies and we know that we always have support at school when we need it. Take a look below, to see all the amazing work we have been doing.

What do we do at Saint Mary’s?

At Saint Mary’s we:

  • help children to understand their emotions and feelings
  • help children feel comfortable sharing worries or concerns
  • help children socially to form and maintain healthy relationships
  • promote self-esteem and ensure all children know that they are important
  • help children to develop emotional resilience and to manage setbacks

Coronavirus (COVID-19) advice and support for parents and carers (NSPCC)

The NSPCC has created a number of resources to support parents and carers during this difficult time. Topics include:

·         Talking to a child worried about coronavirus

·         Parents working from home

·         Children staying home alone

·         Lockdown and separated parents

·         How to cope with tantrums and other difficult behaviour

Andrew Hall, Safeguarding consultant, has recommended the following resources:

NSPCC – coronavirus advice – support for children, families and parents

Students Advice While Isolated

Activities To Support Mental Being

Beating Your Worries

Beating Your Worries is a useful booklet to use to support your child if they are struggling with anxiety while in lockdown. It is produced by Sophie Wragg and is aimed at children aged 9 +.