Health and Wellbeing
At St Leonard's, our aim is to care for and develop the whole child educationally, emotionally, spiritually, morally and physically. As well as caring for their education we also care for their mental health and wellbeing and feel that it is essential to provide children with information to enable them to make life long, well informed decisions about their diet and health.
We aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing of every member of our school community and recognise how important mental health and wellbeing is to our lives, as is physical health. We recognise that children’s mental health and overall wellbeing can affect their learning and achievement.
Positive wellbeing is promoted through the curriculum and all school activities. Through a carefully planned approach to PSHE our pupils are helped to acquire the knowledge and develop the skills and understanding they need to lead confident, healthy, independent lives, and to become resilient, informed and responsible citizens.
In addition, whole school approaches such as assemblies and circle time sessions are used to further develop the pupils’ knowledge of strategies. We promote national campaigns such as Children's Mental Health Week in February and Anti-bullying Week in November. During these events, the focus is on mindfulness and resilience with the purpose of teaching children strategies for dealing with anxiety and coping with changes.
Anti-Bullying
In school we do not tolerate bullying. Our first Pupil Promise is to 'Keep Myself Safe' and our Vision includes 'Love and Value All'. We believe that everyone should be respected and treated well by others at all time. We always encourage children to speak up if something is not right. They can do this by speaking to an adult or putting a note in their class Worry Monster. If your child tells you about events that have happened at school, please speak with your child's class teacher about it in the first instance. We will take it seriously. You can find our anti-bullying policy on the policies tab of our website. Each year we participate in Anti-bullying Week with special focussed sessions making sure that all children understand what is not acceptable behaviour.
Anti-bullying Alliance - An advice booklet for parents
Mental Health
In school positive mental health is promoted in a variety of ways through the PSHE curriculum, Worship and extra-curricular activities as well as informal interactions.
Nip In the Bud - produce short films and fact sheets to help parents, primary school teachers and others caring for and working with children to recognise potential mental health conditions. The goal is to increase the prospects of early intervention and to reduce the risks of those conditions becoming more serious in later years.
https://nipinthebud.org/ Example of some guides: Recognising Anxiety Fact Sheet Recognising Depression Fact Sheet
Ollee - Ollee is an app from ParentZone which helps children aged 8-11 open up about what’s troubling them – and helps parents and carers offer them extra support. Ollee is funded by BBC Children in Need’s A Million & Me initiative, which aims to make a difference to children’s emotional wellbeing. Click here to view the Ollee information factsheet. There is also a link to Ollee on our children's page of the website.
MindEd - A guide about talking to your child about worries or issues.
Anxiety - A series of chapters about helping your child if they have anxiety.
Moving on to High School
Our Year 6 teachers work with the children to support them in their move to high school. Some children will need more support than others and we work with families and high schools to make the transition as easy as possible. We also host a workshop for children run by the Children and Family Wellbeing Service as part of our transition programme as well as hosting Y6 children from local schools so that they will be able to meet each other before and begin to build friendships before their induction days.
Young Minds - scroll down for advice for parents to help support the move to high school
https://www.youngminds.org.uk/professional/resources/supporting-school-transitions/
Anna Freud - a guide for parents to help support the move to high school