Mental Heath and Well-Being

At Mount Pleasant Primary School, we are part of the Mental Well-being Trailblazer, which has allowed us to work closely with experts across the field, in delivering positive outcomes for mental health and well-being of the whole school community.

The Department of Education (DfE) recognises that: “in order to help their children succeed; schools have a role to play in supporting them to be resilient and mentally healthy”.

The pandemic has highlighted even further the importance of positive mental health and well-being, and as such we have delivered many sessions on recognising emotions and feelings and enabling everyone to be able to have the correct vocabulary to express these feelings. This has enabled children to be able to manage these difficult and strange times.

Staff Training

The whole school staff have been trained through the Mental Well-being Trailblazer and had training such as Developing Children’s Resilience and Wellbeing. We have assigned staff who have had further training such as Mental Health First Aider training, ROAR, ELSA, Bereavement. Named Emotional Well-being Leads (Mrs Turner and Mrs Whinfrey) also attend network meetings to discuss and further improve practice.

Parent Sessions

We regularly hold virtual parent sessions, to support and provide further understanding in positive mental health and wellbeing.

Our Approach

We work on a 3-tiered approach for supporting positive mental health and well-being.

Whole class level, where regular PSHCE type sessions take place in the classroom to promote a good understanding of mental health and well-being and enabling rich vocabulary in being able to express feelings and emotions.
Small group intervention – these are generally for children who need additional support in being to express or manage their feelings. They are usually short term.
1-1 sessions with individual children who need more time to be able to talk through and work their way through particular issues.

This 3-tiered approach has been successful in preventing escalation and has led to positive outcomes. Finally, with parental permission, we do make referrals to seek further external expert support for some children in need of these services, such as CAMHS (see below).

External Agencies

We have a strong links with a number of Mental Health Support agencies including: