Bedale Church Of England Primary School

Mental Health and Wellbeing

Wellbeing

Mrs Durham recently completed her training to be our Senior Mental Health Leader. Her year-long course involved a number of modules and coaching sessions with specialist tutors covering leadership, ethos and environment, staff development and interventions and impact.

Working alongside Mrs Durham are Miss Adamska and Mrs Gillam-Wallace, who offer 1:1 or group sessions for pupils emotional wellbeing and support. Mrs Ball is the SENDCo of the school and is the point of contact for Early Help.

Early Help

Early Help provides early support to families at any stage of a child's life when a problem or difficulty first arises. We will build on your family's strengths and work with you to find solutions. If you feel you need Early Help support, please make an appointment with Mrs Ball.

Support for children

Children can also receive advice and support from Childline (0800 1111) or download the ‘For Me’ app.

If you need help to support your child’s mental wellbeing, this list of online education resources for home education includes mental wellbeing resources which provide guidance on how to support the wellbeing of children and young people.

Emotional Wellbeing sessions

Miss Adamska works with children in 1:1 weekly emotional wellbeing sessions. Blocks of work run for 6 weeks and families will be contacted at both the beginning and the end of the sessions. She has had support from Compass Phoenix (a service designed to support children with mild to moderate emotional wellbeing difficulties) who offer advice and resources for emotional literacy, anxiety, self-esteem, grief, and loss. In each session, we talk about how the pupil is feeling, get involved in a craft activity, play games and complete worksheets based around the pupil's needs. Miss Adamska has training in counselling skills, which has enriched her knowledge in supporting people with their emotional wellbeing. 

Wellbeing Club

On a Wednesday lunchtime, children are invited to join Wellbeing Club with Mrs Ball and Miss Jefferson. It is a delightful club as children come along from EYFS all the way up to year 6. They eat lunch together, chat and play in the wrap around care classroom. The children play so nicely together, and it is a lovely opportunity for the children in the older years to play with the younger children. It is heart-warming to see how caring and nurturing they are towards each other. 

The club runs all year and in the summer months the children have enjoyed playing football and practising their performances for the Wellbeing end of year show. 

There are so many lovely activities, this year they have loved painting, drawing, playing with playdoh and small world toys. One of their favourites is to play 'teachers'. Some children enjoy coming along just for a chat about their week and things that they are doing at home. We love to hear about their holiday plans, siblings, pets and their hobbies.

Military Children Wellbeing

Across the school there are several military children, who have a parent currently serving (or who have served) in the armed forces. Being a military child can often mean coping with a parent being away from home regularly or for an extended period, for example, during a deployment. It may also mean they move house/school more frequently than the average child and face the possibility of the parent/guardian going away at short notice- sometimes to an unsafe destination with no communication. This can be unsettling for children, so we offer weekly 1:1 to wellbeing sessions. This gives the children an opportunity to discuss their feelings in a supportive environment, with someone who understands the challenges they face. They may also read stories, complete activities that aim to help certain areas of their wellbeing, for example, self-esteem and resilience, play games and make something for the person deploying/deployed.