Mental Health & Well Being

Mental Health and Wellbeing at St.Bernadette’s Catholic Primary School

At St. Bernadette’s Catholic Primary School, we aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing for our whole school community and recognise how important mental health and emotional wellbeing are to our lives. Our role is to ensure that everyone is able to manage times of change and stress, and that all members of our community are supported to reach their potential or access help when they need it. We also have a responsibility to ensure that our children, staff, and wider community learn how to maintain positive mental health, understand what affects their mental health, help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and know where to go for support.

Therefore, we have developed a curriculum to help children become more resilient and aware of their own mental health and wellbeing. For children, mental health encompasses their emotional, social, and cognitive wellbeing. It involves how they feel, think, and act, and is crucial for their overall development. Mental health affects daily life, relationships, and learning. In childhood, good mental health includes reaching developmental and emotional milestones, learning healthy social skills, and developing strategies to cope with challenges.

We encourage the following abilities through our delivery:

Resilience

This is the ability to bounce back from challenges and adapt to changes, which is important for long-term well-being. Children develop the ability to manage stress, learn from mistakes, and build confidence. When children build resilience they form stronger relationships, have better problem-solving skills and manage their emotions better.

Healthy relationships

Healthy relationships with peers and adults can foster a sense of belonging and support. Children have healthy relationships when their communication is based on respect, trust, honesty and open communication. Healthy relationships offer support and encouragement, helping children to grow and develop their confidence. Children who learn to build and maintain relationships develop empathy and can communicate effectively.

Self-regulation

These are abilities that help children manage their emotions, behaviours, thoughts and choices of actions especially in the face of challenging situations. It is a crucial skill as it impacts learning, social interactions and overall well-being. Children learn how to manage and regulate strong emotions like anger, frustration and sadness. It is important for children to know how to control their impulses, by resisting the urge to act on immediate desires and rather make more thoughtful decisions. Children are encouraged to maintain attention on tasks and resist distractions.

What we provide your child.

We have several programmes and methods we use to encourage this. These programmes are described below.

Compass

This company are a NHS endorsed group who offer support to your child’s mental health through counselling. This service is offered at no cost to yourselves and we have many children who have really benefitted from their time spent in sessions. They can offer one to one counselling with a child or sometimes where more appropriate they offer parent and child meetings to help you develop together. These can take place in person at school, in a community place or over Zoom.

Letter for Parents Intro to MHST

Pupil Voice:

A Year 4 pupil said,”I learnt ways to calm down. I use these a lot. I use Happy Breathing.”

A Year 4 pupil said, “They were awesome. They taught me to take a deep breath. I could talk about what happened and my feelings.”

INSERT BB Parent flyer to be found in Staffshare, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Compass, BB parent flyer

Throughout the year we will organise one-off workshops for parents as advertised in the newsletter. Their parent worker has a lot of experience in sharing ideas and knowledge that we could use as parents when our children are experiencing difficulties.

You can self-refer to Compass or ask Miss Corkery, Mrs Taylor or Miss Finn and they can talk you through the process to receive your consent for a referral.

You can self-refer to Compass or ask Miss Corkery, Mrs Taylor or Miss Finn and they can talk you through the process to receive your consent for a referral

My Happy Minds

Children are led through a weekly informative programme where they are shown how parts of our brain drive how we feel. They watch short videos, play games, hear short stories for each section.

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My Happy Mind Happiness Heroes

This is a group of KS2 children who meet regularly to share how to help their year band sort out little issues in the playground or the classroom. They will start the important role of Playground Ambassadors and will be trained in how to watch out for children that are sad or lonely on the playground. They will be trained in how to start a conversation to help others explain what they are feeling and what to do to help.