Our Approach

Supporting everyone’s emotional and mental health of the highest priority for the school.

This is something that we have developed considerably, partly as a response to the impact of the pandemic. We use the Trauma Informed Schools UK (TISUK) approach with a culture of warmth and social engagement in all staff-pupil relationships.

Our Emotional and Mental Health Graduated Response document captures how we do this. There are three levels of support that we offer:

Tier 1- Universal Offer

• This is what we do for all children to support their emotional wellbeing as well as whole-school approaches and training for staff

Tier 2 – Targeted Offer

• This is the extra support that we provide for children who are identified as emotionally vulnerable. This includes adjusting expectations and practices around vulnerable children to correspond with those children’s developmental capabilities and experience of traumatic stress and loss

Tier 3 – Enhanced Offer

• This is more specialist, bespoke provision for children who are really struggling or with complex needs, often tapping into outside specialist support

As part of our ‘Tier 1’ offer, every child from Year 1 upwards has a named emotionally available adult system. This is someone chosen by the child who they feel they could comfortably talk to if they needed to. Their named adult checks in with them from time to time, for example when they are on break duty or if their teacher tells them they are struggling, and we will encourage children to seek them out if they feel they need some support.

Zones of Regulation

We use Zones of Regulation to support children to understand their emotions and to learn how to self-regulate (manage their feelings when they get big).