Championing mental health provision in primary schools

With mental health leads coming into place to champion children’s wellbeing and a strategic and embedded approach being a national focus across the school community, there is a sense of hopefulness of a distinct rise in awareness around mental health and children’s wellbeing and their needs being championed with greater advocacy and determination.

Staff wellbeing is another high priority and the recognition of how adults in schools are at the forefront of responding, managing and offering direct support for children and young people and their needs, has to be strategically planned for so that there are the mechanisms for supervision on a formal and informal basis, a range of training and wellbeing policies that offer various activities, provision and opportunities for staff to feel recognised, valued and supported.

There is however the ongoing danger and reality of pressure on schools to jump straight back in again to a driven focus on attainment and a ‘catch up’ mentality, despite the mental health lead agenda and therefore it is essential that we hold strong in having children’s wellbeing at the forefront because we know that ‘happier children learn best.’

We need to continue with a focus on an ongoing recovery curriculum that embodies emotional and mental health awareness and a taught emotional curriculum.

We now have PSHE as a statutory requirement, and not before time, to ensure that personal development and life skills are given their place in the timetable. There is a more direct focus on mental health as one of the core strands, but it could be argued that there is still a gap for a comprehensive and wide-ranging emotional curriculum that explores how we experience, understand and process our emotions against a backdrop of the number of children with emerging mental health needs and early intervention being recognised as paramount for the long term mental health of children and young people.

Alongside parents and carers, it is schools, teachers, pastoral staff, and mental health leads that know their children well. Whilst services beyond schools are very much needed, there is recognition of the vital part schools play in providing higher-level emotional and mental health provision through nurture bases, intervention groups and one-to-one sessions with trained TAs, Pastoral support staff, ELSAs and mental health champions.

There is a growing need for more programmes, resources and a comprehensive and strategic approach to support children at intervention level in school, delivered by the adults who really know them and who have a connection and relationship with them.

It is the daily check ins, the regular smiles and recognition that are the safety net for children and nurturing schools are where children feel safer rather than referral out to wider services at early intervention level, where support can be more challenging on a set time frame, and where there are long waiting lists for set pieces of work. So how best can we strengthen the support and resources to schools, children and families?

We need to equip and support our pastoral teams with a range of impact measurable programmes, training and ongoing supervision so that they are able to reflect on their experiences of working with children and their practice in a way that is supportive, informative and professional so that we offer wide ranging layers of support at universal through to intervention level and to then know that there are the multi-disciplinary wellbeing hubs and MHTS that can offer consultation, signposting and further resources. The plans are in place and we now need to embrace the changes that these approaches can bring whilst supporting our schools who are doing the day to day work to support the emotional wellbeing of their children.

Every child needs to feel heard, supported and connected to so that their emotional, as well as their curriculum needs, are met with proactive approaches available to them. At Hamish & Milo we are proud to offer a comprehensive programme of emotional intervention. It is of course, not a ‘fix-all’ approach but offers programmes around ten mental health themes for pastoral staff to use for small nurture group working to provide a greater depth of understanding about emotions, how we understand them, think about them, process and respond in ways that are practical, reflective and challenging. We offer impact measuring tools to help identify levels of need and ten programmes around mental health themes; anxiety, change and transition, loss, sadness, angry feelings, diversity, resilience, self-esteem, conflict resolution and friendship.

We recognise the work that schools are constantly doing to support children and young people and are striving to offer practical, affordable and innovative resources and to offer ongoing support to schools to meet the needs of every child. Check out our website for more information about our comprehensive resource.