Mental Health & Wellbeing

We believe promoting positive mental health and wellbeing is central to the overall personal development of young people. Knowing how to keep healthy, both emotionally and physically, is one of our key wellbeing provision ambitions. Young people who ‘Thrive’ due to greater wellbeing and lower levels of mental health issues achieve high academic outcomes, have higher levels of attendance and have strong sense of resilience; all of which develop future aspirations and improve life chances.

Our school’s pastoral and SEND teams take both a proactive and responsive approach towards ensuring positive mental health and wellbeing and we are always seeking to develop our ‘3-stage’ provision (see accompanying ‘Triangle of Need’) within an open and transparent culture that aims to break down associated stigmas surrounding mental ill health.

Our school culture promotes discussion about positive mental health and wellbeing, explicitly teaches about positive mental health & wellbeing and positive/negative coping strategies in our LIFE (PSHCE) curriculum and signposts effective help available. As teachers and support staff, we recognise we are often key figures in a young person’s life and are well placed to offer aid, support and guide to appropriate support. We are committed to supporting the emotional wellbeing of all our school community and our A&A team are a dedicated to delivering this vision. We review our provision and support plan regularly to make sure we are considering the needs of the school community and adapting our practice and priorities accordingly.

A range of student wellbeing support resources are signposted on Year Group Google Classrooms for 24/7 ‘around the clock’ support and some can also be referenced via links below

Useful Links for Students and Parents

Self-help books/booklets
Reading Well – Young People & Mental Health
Beating Eating Disorders
Papyrus UK
Young Minds
Kooth
NSPCC
Anxiety UK
MIND – Stress Management

Self-help exercises
MIND – Self help for anxiety
Moodjuice – NHS Scotland – Anxiety
NHS UK – Ways to relieve stress
Get self-help – flashbacks

Exam stress
How to deal with exam stress
CAMHS
NHS Conditions, Stress Anxiety Depression Mental Health Helplines
NHS Mental Health Services

Teen Body Image And Self-esteem
Teen Body Image And Self-esteem A Practical Guide For Parents
Ok to Ask Campaign (suicide awareness and prevention)
Barnardo’s BOSS Service (early intervention emotional health and wellbeing service working alongside CAMHS)

Tackling the Blues (sports and arts-based education programme supporting children and young people experiencing, or are at risk of developing, mental illness)
Tackling the Blues

App links
Calm Harm (self harm support)
Clear Fear (anxiety support)
Move Mood (low mood support)
Combined Minds (information for families supporting a young persons mental health)
Breathwrk (breathing exercises to help anxiety) 
Calm (meditation and sleeping)
BetterSleep (sleeping tracker)
MoodNotes (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, only on Apple App Store)
Bloom (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
Gratitude (self-care journalling) 
Breeze (Journalling, developed with concepts from Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapy) Apple
Breeze: mental health – Apps on Google Play (Google Play)
Wysa (24/7 AI chatbot using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) 
Finch (self-care journalling) 
Reflectly (AI journalling)