St Anne’s Infants’ School, Bristol

Our Hamish & Milo Story

The school ethos and value is to see all their children ‘reach for the stars’ to be Self-believers, Team-players, Adventurous, Resilient and Successful.

St Anne’s Infant School located in Bristol provides education for children from Nursery to Year 2. The school environment is vibrant and welcoming with colourful displays that create an inviting and engaging environment for learning.

There is a great emphasis placed upon wellbeing and the children being given opportunities to develop their social and emotional skills and to be able to achieve their best. Headteacher Anna Sutherland highlights this “St Anne’s Infants’ is a wonderful community where staff, children, families and governors work closely together to enable everyone to ‘Reach for the Stars’. We are committed to giving our children the best possible start in life and work hard to provide an environment in which they can all flourish.”

As an accredited nurture school, St Anne’s approach is led and based on nurturing values at a strategic level. The school began using Hamish & Milo Wellbeing Resources in September 2023 with Pastoral Lead, Jen Owen taking on the role of Hamish & Milo Champion. Jen has now run a significant number of programmes which has supported over 40 children with a range of social and emotional needs.

St Anne's School Bristol logo
St Anne's school story Hamish & Milo Garden activity
St Anne's school story Hamish & Milo room
St Anne's school story Exploding me activity

Using the Hamish & Milo programme

Hamish & Milo has become central to the Inclusion Team’s pastoral approach and groups are being run daily for different children across the school. Currently, they are running groups in the following emotion theme programmes:

To launch the Hamish & Milo wellbeing intervention approach, staff across the school were involved with a training session led by Jen and guided on how to refer children for the intervention. There is now a growing and successful system in place where staff and/or parents can raise a request for a child to join.

Jen and the school SENCO then work closely together to allocate and develop the group work in order to respond to the children’s need. For each group Jen creates a portfolio of work to celebrate children’s experience and to highlight the activities and the skills the children are learning.

Hamish & Milo Programmes - Amazing me Icon
Hamish & Milo Programmes - Calm me Icon
Hamish & Milo Programmes - Resilient me Icon
Hamish & Milo Programmes - Finding me Icon
Hamish & Milo Programmes - New beginnings and me Icon
Hamish & Milo Programmes - Actions Words and me Icon
Hamish & Milo Programmes - Exploding me Icon

Highlights using the Hamish & Milo programme

Jen says that the children love coming to the group sessions and shared some of the highlights from her perspective.

  • The resources have really clear structure and progress as you go through the programme building on the emotional concepts.
  • The programmes are completely adaptable, flexible and really support the stage and age of the children.
  • The programmes give the children real permission to have feelings and acknowledges how this is important for us all.
  • The co-regulation of the resource is such an important thing as the children feel safe, listened too and able to have the feelings they have.
  • There has been positive feedback from parents with many asking if their child can be involved.

  • The children love the puppets and they link with our enquiry work so the children are able to use these skills in their learning.

  • Teachers are all on board and are seeing an impact back in the classrooms.

  • Navigator has been great to be able to see progress and to screen grab information for individual child records.

There were also many positive highlights shared by teachers and parents of children using the Hamish & Milo intervention who have seen and experienced firsthand the positive impact.

St Anne's school story image sock puppet making
St Anne's school story image

Feedback from children

  • One child whose parent was ill completed New Beginnings and me said at the end of the programme, “ You can’t be brave if you are not afraid.” Showing their courage and recognition of the enormity of the situation and being able to talk about it had been a huge help.

  • A child completing Exploding me who found it difficult to manage angry feelings and needed help to be able to calm down. At the end of the programme the teacher said how the child was now able to share their feelings and to be able to talk about them and the child recognised how, “Anger is a good feeling… well, not a bad one!”
  • Another child was struggling with changes in her family. She was able to talk about her experiences and to recognise how: “Sometimes I feel angry and cross when people don’t listen to me.”

Feedback from parents

Parents are really supportive of the programme and can see the benefits for their children. Often now they are asking for their children to join the groups.

  • One parent commented on how the experience of completing Exploding me was “Transformational!”

  • Another parent said “I don’t know what you have done but it’s great, she is a different child!”

Feedback from teachers

  • “A child in my class has become so much more independent as a result of the Hamish & Milo intervention. More able to self-regulate, use the strategies she has learnt.”

  • One of the children now has a calm space, and is able to use the strategies to help him.

  • The New Beginnings and me programme is now a key part of transition and seen as the approach for enhanced transition work.

Using Navigator – Impact Reporting Dashboard

Navigator has been a central part in collating children’s experience and being able to show the impact the Hamish & Milo intervention has been having. Navigator has been used to capture both group and individual child progress, collecting data pre- and post intervention.

St Anne's Navigator Dashboard

“It is easy to use and has given me the information for all the children involved. I can screen grab the information for the schools shared records and you can really see the impact.”

Jen Owen, Pastoral Lead

St Anne's school story sunflower activity
St Anne's school story activity
St Anne's school story activity

Other school stories

  • St Anne's Infants' School Story Hamish & Milo

    St Anne’s Infants’ School, Bristol

    St Anne’s Infants began using Hamish & Milo in 2023 and has experienced a positive impact supporting over 40 children with a range of social and emotional needs. "One parent commented on how the child completing Exploding me had been "Transformational!”

  • Saltersgate Infant School Doncaster Hamish & Milo

    Saltersgate Infant School, Doncaster

    Saltersgate is an infant school in South Yorkshire that strives to place wellbeing at the centre for its 350 children. “We have never really found anything before Hamish & Milo that is bespoke enough and where we can see this level of impact. We now have developed the role of our support staff to be able to deliver this across the school and to do more of this work.”

  • Hamish & Milo & St John St Mark CoE Primary School

    St John with St Mark CoE Primary School, Bury

    “We know we are making a difference. Our Head is fully behind me...It is a game changer for our school, a gift!” Jill Wilcock, St John with St Mark CoE Primary School, Bury, Greater Manchester.