Mental Health and Wellbeing
All about us
Designated Mental Health Lead – Miss N Duffy
Contact Telephone – 01642 455309
Contact Email – [email protected]
Mental Health and Wellbeing Offer
At St. Mary’s Catholic Primary School, we are committed to supporting the emotional health and well-being of all pupils and staff. We know that everyone experiences challenges that can make us vulnerable and at times and we recognise that anyone may need additional emotional support. We take the view that positive mental health is everybody’s business and that we all have a role to play.
At our school we:
- help children to recognise and understand their emotions and feelings better
- provide a safe space for children
- help children feel comfortable sharing any concerns or worries
- help children socially to form and maintain positive relationships
- promote self esteem and ensure children know that they are loved
- encourage children to be confident and ‘dare to be different’
- help children to develop emotional resilience and emotional literacy to manage ay setbacks they experience
Overall well-being
At St. Mary’s, every member of staff is invested in ensuring that the children’s mental health and overall well-being is a priority.
We have created and developed a bespoke package to support children’s mental health and well-being, in response to the needs of the school and training, we do this through a ‘trauma informed approach’. Here is our ‘My Mind With Me’ offer, which every child at St. Mary’s has access to:
St Mary’s offers one to one and group therapy, this is a service delivered by a qualified counsellor and a trainee counsellor.
Counselling is a process in which counsellors can help to explore and understand difficulties and then help to develop resources and strategies to be able to cope with them.
There can be a lot of pressure of children/young people, as well as having to cope with adolescents and the strong physical changes that go with this. Young people find that the time and space they get in counselling helps them to feel better and cope at home and school.
Miss N. Duffy.
Email: [email protected]
At St Mary’s we believe that all children and young people have the right to an education regardless of what is happening at home. When a child looks after a friend or someone in their family with a history of long term physical or mental health illness, a disability or alcohol or substance abuse the young person may need some extra support to help them get the most out of school.
A Young Carer may undertake some or all of the following:
- Practical tasks
- Physical care
- Personal and intimate care
- Emotional support
- Household management
- Looking after siblings
- Interpretation
- Administering medication
St Mary’s is committed to identifying the needs of Young Carers and supporting Young Carers’ access to a full education, working in partnership with their families.
We are building strong links with https://thejunctionfoundation.com/servi
ces/young-carers/. This work is supporting us to help young people, families and our school community to identify Young Carers and safeguard them in an appropriate way.
Designated Young Carers Operational Leads: Miss Nicole Duffy
Contact Telephone: 01642 455 309
Email: enquiries@ stmarys.npcat.org.uk
St. Mary’s is named as a Rainbow’s Site school, this is a service delivered by a trained member of staff within the school to support the emotional and well-being of our children. A member of staff have achieved ELSA training and are now delivering small group and individual ELSA sessions to support children’s emotional literacy in school.
Mrs P. Hunton.
PSHE is embedded within the curriculum at St. Mary’s. PSHE enables the children to understand and respect who they are, empower them with a voice and equips them for life and learning.
St. Mary’s are also working with Headstart South Tees to support children in school with mental health, from this, mental class health champions are allocated and support mental health activities across school.
St. Mary’s are developing a Trauma Informed Approach to support all children in school.
