Our Commitment

At INSPIRE we are committed to promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing to all students, their families and members of staff and governors. Our open culture allows students’ voices to be heard, and through the use of effective policies and procedures we ensure a safe and supportive environment for all affected – both directly and indirectly – by mental health issues.

We have developed a Trust wide policy which is a guide for all staff – including non-teaching and governors – outlining INSPIRE’s approach to promoting mental health and emotional wellbeing.

How else do we support Mental health & well-being across our Trust?

• All Governing bodies have a lead for mental health & well-being with a clearly defined role
• We hold termly network meetings to develop and share good practice
• We hold termly coaching & development working groups using case studies to develop knowledge and practice which are facilitated by our Educational Psychologist
• Twice yearly wellbeing surveys across the whole Trust
• We have a well-being strand in our People Strategy
• We have invested in a central Inclusion & well-being team

When children and young people have good levels of wellbeing, it helps them to:

• learn and explore the world
• feel, express and manage positive and negative emotions
• form and maintain good relationships with others
• cope with, and manage, change, setbacks and uncertainty
• develop and thrive.

When children and young people look after their mental health and develop their coping skills it can help them to boost their resilience, self-esteem and confidence. It can also help them learn to manage their emotions, feel calm, and engage positively with their education – which can, in turn, improve their academic attainment.

At our schools we believe in nurturing the WHOLE child- good mental health & self esteem go hand in hand with better academic achievement and our aim is to help ALL our children to achieve their potential.

Supporting Parents

We recognise the family plays a key role in influencing children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing; we will work in partnership with parents and carers to promote emotional health and wellbeing by:

• Ensuring all parents are aware of and have access to promoting social and emotional wellbeing and preventing mental health problems;
• Highlighting sources of information and support about common mental health issues through our communication channels (website, newsletters etc.);
• Offering support to help parents or carers develop their parenting skills. This may involve providing information or offering small, group-based programmes run by community nurses (such as school nurses and health visitors) or other appropriately trained health or education practitioners; and
• Ensuring parents, carers and other family members living in disadvantaged circumstances are given the support they need to participate fully in activities to promote social and emotional wellbeing. This will include support to participate in any parenting sessions, by offering a range of times for the sessions or providing help with transport and childcare. We recognise this might involve liaison with family support agencies.

We have an open-door policy which means we want families to feel they can come and talk to us about anything. Our Pastoral teams across the Trust are highly trained and knowledgeable and can signpost families to the support they need.

Well-being provision across our Trust is a thread running through everything we do.

Our PSHCE and RSE curriculums have been developed to be progressive and cover aspects of mental health & well-being across different strands. Mental health & well-being is not only taught and discussed in these lessons though as we see it as a fundamental part of the skills and knowledge we teach our children.

Assemblies are carefully planned to ensure mental health is something we talk about all the time- constantly building on children’s skills, giving them tools to help them manage their own feelings and emotional health.

We have also developed representation and diversity across our curriculum areas to further develop mental health & wellbeing.

Most of our schools have well-being check ins daily with all their pupils, and there has been heavy investment in providing all schools with books to support the teaching of areas of well-being.

Our designated school lead for mental health & well-being is: Mrs K Gawthorp

To support leaders and staff in schools we have introduced a designated Mental Health & Wellbeing lead in all of our schools.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

• To support the Headteacher and SENCo in the implementation & reviewing of the school’s mental health and wellbeing strategy and policy.

• To support the staff to understand the part they play in supporting the mental health & well-being of their pupils and to give them access to the CPD and resources they need to be able to do this effectively.
• To ensure pupils receive the support they need in wave 1,2 3 interventions to make them mentally resilient and promote positive mental health.
• To provide a whole school approach to support staff wellbeing and to enable them to manage their own wellbeing and mental health.

WHAT IS MENTAL HEALTH & WELL-BEING?

We all have mental health. Your mental health affects how you feel, think and act. It refers to your emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. Your mental health can change on a daily basis and over time, and can be affected by a range of factors.

It’s important to look after your mental health, as you would look after your physical health. Your state of wellbeing affects how you cope with stress, relate to others and make choices. It also plays a part in your relationships with your family, community, colleagues and friends.