Mental Health & Wellbeing
At Little Houghton CE Primary School, we believe that we provide a safe and supportive environment for building life skills, wellbeing, resilience and a strong sense of belonging to the school.
Our approach to teaching and embedding wellbeing in our school aims to protect positive mental health, enhance the capacity of children to cope with difficult situations and reduces the likelihood that a mental health problem will develop.
We aim to achieve this through:
- Having a fully trained Senior Mental Health Lead in school
- Ensuring positive relationships with parents, teachers and other stakeholders
- Developing a positive school climate, a sense of belonging and a sense of security and safety
- Having effective school policies and a strategic plan that embeds mental health and wellbeing
- Developing problem solving skills, coping and resilience though a number of specific programmes
- Focusing on the positive mental health of teachers and school staff as well as children and young people.
We are part of the MakingMe wellbeing programme which provides a subsidised Primary School Emotional Literacy Programme which embraces a whole school approach:
- School staff have an introductory workshop so that the same approach and language are used throughout the school.
- Children are given assemblies, resources and workshops.
- Parents are offered information about the work MakingMe do, with suggestions to further reinforce the strategies in the home.
We have also recently run a programme in Y5/6 with Northampton Town Football Club Community Trust called ‘Team Talk’.
Team Talk has been designed to achieve the following outcomes:
- Improve pupils' understanding and awareness of mental health/wellbeing
- Increase pupils' confidence in identifying mental health needs within themselves and peers
- Improve pupils' awareness of strategies/exercises to improve wellbeing, including physical/social/mental/emotional strategies
- Increase pupils' awareness of the support available to them in the community
- Improve teachers' confidence in identifying mental health needs within themselves, pupils and teaching peers
- Improve teachers' understanding and awareness of the mental health challenges facing children
- Increase teachers' confidence in delivering mental health provision
Both programmes have had a significant impact on the wellbeing of our children who tell us:
‘I understand my feelings more’ and ‘we know what to do when we feel happy or sad’
MakingMe has ‘helped me to realise my emotions’ and ‘to be myself’.