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Mental Health

How do we promote good mental health at St Peter's School?

We are place high importance on positive mental health at St Peter's School. We provide opportunities for children to develop their well-being, whether it is through assemblies, PSHE, extracurricular clubs, mindfulness practice and well-being activities in class or ELSA supervision. We believe that looking after children's well-being is fundamental to enable them to be in the best place to learn. We have a Mental Health and Well-Being Team at school, including Mrs Blake (Mental Health Lead), Miss Wolstenholme (SENCo), Ms Rashid (Inclusion & Safeguarding Lead), Mrs Powell (ELSA and Peer Mediation Lead), Mrs Allison & Mr Le Cornec (Mental Health First Aider) and Miss MacFarlane (ELSA). 

We follow the Mentally Healthy Schools programme created by the Anna Freud Foundation. 

Here is a link to some resources for Parents and Carers when talking to your child about Mental Health: 

Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSAs)

Our ELSA team at school consists of Mrs Powell and Miss Macfarlane. They work with individual pupils, or occasionally groups of pupils, to support with areas such as friendships, managing emotions and understanding feelings. Our ELSAs plan sessions based on the needs of each pupil using a variety of activities and books to support with learning. We will always talk to you first if we think your child would benefit from a more programme of support.

There are lots of fantastic free resources on the ELSA website for you to access at home to support with emotional literacy:  Free Resources Archives - ELSA Support (elsa-support.co.uk) 

Decider Skills

The Decider Skills use the theories of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to teach children, young people and adults the skills to recognise their own thoughts, feelings and behaviours, enabling them to monitor and manage their own emotions and mental health. St. Peter's promotes this appraoch as it will ensure children will feel more confident about what they can and can't control. we do this by teaching them the signs and what these represent. 

Mindfulness and Well-being at Home

Talking to our children about there well-being and enabling them to share and normalise any feelings they are having will help support their mental health.

Place2Be is a fantastic organisation championing the issue of children’s mental health, and they have some brilliant information for talking to children and top tips to look after everyone’s mental health.

Below are some links to some mindfulness resources to use at home if you wish: