It’s vital that we do all we can to look after our mental health. At Westfield we support all our pupils to do this through a variety of ways. Mental health and wellbeing is a feature of the curriculum at every stage in the school. As well as class teachers and TAs, we have a team of three Pupil and Parent Support workers and every pupil in the school is linked with one of them. The PaPS team provide individualised support for any pupil who is struggling.
We also have our beautiful school therapy dog, Luna, who provides support to pupils across the school. Some pupils access external support such as the Swifts team at CAMHS.
We take a therapeutic approach to supporting the behaviour of pupils called Dorset Steps. This approach is based on strong attachment models and encourages positive mental health and wellbeing. You can read more about this here.
The Anna Freud Centre have some really useful resources to support understanding around mental health. They produced this video called ‘We all have mental health’.
Below are some ideas for helping you to be calm and ideas from our pupils about what works for them. There are also links to the Place2Be website with really useful resources and a blog for parent carers to support their children’s mental health. The DfE have also listed a comprehensive page of resources on their website.
Place2Be resources for parent carers
DfE mental health links and resources
