At Smith's Wood Primary School, we believe that supporting our children, staff and parents with their mental health and wellbeing is vital towards the running of our school. 

Curriculum

Through the use of our Character Education teaching at school, we help the children to feel secure in themselves, and promote self-belief and resilience in their everyday learning. As a school, we have identified the importance of teaching about the awareness of mental health and wellbeing, and therefore it has become a main part of our PSHE lesson, with every child accessing ‘me time’ each week. During this time, every child has the opportunity to reflect on themselves, practising mindfulness activities and learning the importance of breathing to keep calm.

The Team

As a school, we are incredibly lucky to have a brilliant mental health and wellbeing team, including a fully trained Senior Mental Health Leader, as well as a Mental Health First Aider. In addition to this, we have an incredible pastoral team at Smith’s Wood, and access to lots of interventions including: counselling, play therapy and RelaxKids. These staff members are identified around the school, and children feel comfortable talking to these members of staff.

Wellbeing Warriors

At the start of the year, teachers identified a Wellbeing Warrior from each year group. This was a child who is particularly positive, a great listener and always goes above and beyond to help others. Each half-term they meet to discuss what they can do to help support mental health and wellbeing across the whole school. This has included ideas to raise money for charities such as Mind, and creating Playground Pals to help on the KS1 playground with friendships and children who are playing alone. Their opinions are vital to decisions which are made as we move through the school year.

Support

Whilst the support for children is evident in school, it’s also readily available for staff too, with counselling sessions and wellbeing activities available for each half-term.

As a school, we also want to support our parents and carers. Below is a fantastic website which offers contact information and advice for many different mental health and wellbeing topics. If you need any further support, please do not hesitate to contact us.

https://the-waitingroom.org/

We also want to encourage our parents and carers to work with their child on wellbeing activities at home. These activities could include:

• Talking about their day, the positives and negatives which have happened.
• Being active together! Physical health is extremely important in helping mental health.
• Completing a breathing activity such as breathing a feather to each other.
• Trying yoga, and focusing on keeping calm and breathing as you do so.
• Reading a book based on a particular worry or concern. A full list of fantastic books to support your child’s mental health and wellbeing is available below. Many of these books are also in our school library.