Mental Health and Wellbeing
Most families have experienced upheaval in their daily lives during the pandemic. With children and young people now back at school, the new Public Health England (PHE) Better Health – Every Mind Matters campaign provides NHS-endorsed tips and advice to help children and young people’s mental wellbeing, and equip parents and carers with the knowledge to support them.
The new advice available on the Every Mind Matters website has been developed in partnership with leading children and young people’s mental health charities, including Young Minds, The Mix, Place2Be and The Anna Freud Centre. It is designed to help parents and carers spot the signs that children may be struggling with their mental health and support them, and also provides advice that can help maintain good mental wellbeing. The site also provides tools to help young people build resilience and equips them to look after their mental wellbeing.
Some more useful links:
Urgent NHS help for mental health
Please see below for what staff at Balfour are doing to support children's wellbeing in the classroom.
Concerns
If you have any concerns about your child's Emotional Mental Health and Wellbeing you are invited to talk to a Primary Mental Health Worker from the Schools Wellbeing Service. Please email racheltuck@balfour.brighton-hove.sch.uk if you would like any further information or advice.
SEAL - Social & Emotional Aspects of Learning - Key Vocabulary
At Balfour we believe that every child should have the social and emotional knowledge and skills to achieve their potential. We recognise that mental health and emotional wellbeing is just as important to our lives as physical health.
Our aim is to ensure that children are able to manage times of change and stress and are able to access help and support when they need it. We also have a role in ensuring that children learn about: what they can do to maintain positive mental health; what affects their mental health; how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues and where they can go if they need help or support.
Mental Health and wellbeing are a core part of our PSHE curriculum where we build pupils knowledge, vocabulary and skills in naming, understanding and managing their emotions. These are revisited each year and built upon to ensure pupils have the knowledge they need to develop and maintain positive mental health.
Alongside the PSHE curriculum we thread the knowledge and vocabulary associated with mental health and wellbeing through our personal development assemblies and make links with our social responsibility curriculum to provide a more connected and meaningful experience for our pupils.
Pupil Parliament and Wellbeing
As part of the pupil parliament discussions about mental health, the children came up with lots of excellent ideas about how to help others feel calm, happy and safe in school. They talked about enabling others to take a break (Take Five) when things weren't going so well. Please see below.