Mental Health and Wellbeing
As a school we are following the NHS 5 ways to wellbeing. We teach the children about how to look after their own wellbeing and support those around them. We focus on developing healthy relationships with peers and adults and ensuring that our policy of Ready, Respectful, Safe, which is underpinned by our vision of Learning, Loving, Living, is giving children opportunities to make healthy, informed choices.
Pastoral Support at GHF
Pastoral support is provision we provide in school to make sure the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of pupils is cared for. Pastoral care feeds into everything we do to ensure children have the best chance at success in school. Pastoral care is provided daily within classes and ranges from welcoming children into class, individual check-ins, whole class circle time, PSHE lessons and 1:1 discussion.
Additional Pastoral Support is also available for children in 1:1 sessions or group sessions with members of our pastoral team.
Pastoral Support Team
Mrs Shelton – Family Support
Mrs Shelton is our Family Support Worker. Mrs Shelton's role in school is to support families in different areas, such as attendance, behaviour at home, safeguarding and accessing help through the Early Help process and TAC (Team Around the Child).
More information about Mrs Shelton’s support can be found on the Support For Parents page.
Miss Tudor – Emotional Literacy Support Assistant
Miss Tudor is our trained ELSA. She provides 1:1 support for our children by delivering individualised support programmes to meet the emotional needs of children.
Mrs Spence – Pastoral Mentor
Mrs Spence is our Pastoral Mentor. She provides 1:1 individualised support programmes and small group support to children. These include therapeutic interventions such as drawing and talking.
Mrs Garland – Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead
Mrs Garland is our Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead who oversees the work on the Pastoral Team. She supports in making referrals to the Mental Health Support Team (external support offered via NHS).
Support offered at GHF
Therapeutic interventions, Evidence-based interventions and Mental Health & Wellbeing support offered include:
- Drawing and Talking
- Therapeutic skills in the outdoors – via Forest School
- ELSA
- FRIENDS
- Brick-based therapy (Lego)
- Language for Behaviour and Emotions
- Mental Health and wellbeing in the outdoors – via Forest School
- Wellbeing sessions (based on 6-ways to wellbeing and DNA-V)
How children can access Pastoral Support.
There are four main ways to refer a child for pastoral support at GHF:
- A request for pastoral support from classroom-based staff
- A child’s needs are identified by Pastoral Staff through our in-school monitoring.
- A request for support from a parent
- A request for support from a pupil
Should you feel your child requires additional support or help, please speak directly to the classroom teacher or a member of the Pastoral Team.
Support for parents
Healthy Minds Lincolnshire
https://www.lpft.nhs.uk/young-people/lincolnshire/parents-and-carers
NHS Top Tips for supporting your child’s mental health
https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/childrens-mental-health/
WeHeartCBT
WeHeartCBT is a collection of resources for children and young people who are struggling with anxiety and/or low mood, based on a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) approach. There are resources for parents to support your child’s anxiety and/or low mood. https://weheartcbt.com/for-parents
Meet Ollee - your helpful digital friend
Ollee is a digital friend for children aged 8-11, created by Parent Zone and funded by BBC Children in Need’s A Million & Me initiative, which aims to make a difference to children’s emotional wellbeing.
It’s designed to help children reflect on how they feel and to process their experiences with the support and help of their parents and carers – and it does this by offering them advice about a range of subjects: school, family, friends, their body, the internet and the world.
For each of these subjects, children can choose an emotion that matches how they feel about it: happy, angry, sad, confused, frustrated, stressed or worried.
Next, they can choose from a list of topics – for instance, a child who was worried about school might be able to select ‘I haven’t done my homework’ as the cause of their worry. Finally, they’ll see a page of advice about the topic, presented in child-friendly bite-sized chunks they can read then or save for later.
Lumi Nova
Lumi Nova is a fun Digital Therapy App to help your child to self-manage their worries. https://luminova.app/lincolnshire
The app, which should be used with parental supervision, is for children aged 7–12 years who are experiencing mild to moderate anxiety, helping them to learn the skills to self-manage their worries and anxieties in an engaging intergalactic adventure game. It is free for families in Lincolnshire. It is not recommended for children who have severe anxiety.