Children’s Mental Health & Wellbeing 
CHILDREN’S MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING
Our role in school is to ensure that children are able to manage times of change and stress, and that they are supported to reach their potential or access help when they need it. Children are taught when to seek help, what help is available, and the likely outcome of seeking support so that they have the confidence and knowledge for themselves or others. We also have a role to ensure that children learn about what they can do to maintain positive mental health, what affects their mental health and how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues.
At Redesdale Primary School, we believe that teaching about mental health and emotional wellbeing as part of a comprehensive PSHE curriculum and the Thrive Approach, is vital.
PSHE is central to the curriculum across the whole school and assists children to cope with the changes at puberty, introduces them to a wider world, manage transitions and enables them to make an active contribution to their communities. The concepts covered in PSHE include keeping safe and managing risk, identity, equality, managing feelings and emotions, relationships, change, resilience and being healthy, which includes physical, mental, emotional and social well-being. We aim to promote pupils’ wellbeing through an understanding of their own and others’ emotions and the development of healthy coping strategies.
Thrive is a therapeutic approach to help support children with their emotional and social development. It is a whole school approach based around current studies of effective learning and current models of child development – in order to help the school to understand the needs being signalled by children’s behaviour. The Thrive approach offers practical strategies and techniques and is built around online assessments which identify children’s emotional development and provides action plans for their individual needs. In our school whole classes use Thrive techniques and activities to address any issues or as part of PSHE sessions. Children sometimes need some extra support with their emotional growth and this can be temporary or over a longer period of time. Thrive promotes their emotional and social growth by building positive relationships between a child, their peers and the teaching staff and helps them explore and understand their feelings through various activities.
At Redesdale Primary School we support our children’s mental health and wellbeing through a range of approaches and using a wide variety of resources. We understand how important it is that home and school work together to support children’s mental health and wellbeing so have provided some further information and activities that you can access at home:
General Information
Advice for parents and carers: talking mental health with young people at primary school.
Parents’ A-Z Mental Health Guide | Mental Health Advice | YoungMinds
An A-Z guide offering information and advice on how to help your child with specific mental health conditions, and difficult feelings & life events.
How to Talk to Your Child about Mental Health | YoungMinds
Tips and activity ideas for talking to your child about mental health.
5 simple ways you can support your child’s mental health – Family Action (family-action.org.uk)
Tips on how to support your child aged four or over to manage their emotions and build resilience.
Make it Count: Guide for parents and carers | Mental Health Foundation
This guide is for parents and carers to help children understand, protect and sustain their mental health.
Parents’ Guide to Looking After Yourself | Mental Health Support | YoungMinds
Tips for looking after your child while also looking after yourself.
Preparing For Primary School
Transition to primary school – Place2Be
Advice to support your child transitioning to primary school
Starting primary school – BBC Bitesize
Are you and your child prepared for primary school? Find out everything you need to know, from the home to the classroom.
Starting primary school – BBC Teach
The Starting Primary School campaign offers a toolkit of practical advice, support and resources for parents, guardians and children across a wide range of areas including school life, daily routine, sleep and how to support children practically and emotionally.
Bereavement
Supporting bereaved children and young people | Child Bereavement UK 
Children and young people grieve just as much as adults but they show it in different ways. They learn how to grieve by copying the responses of the adults around them, and rely on adults to provide them with the support they need in their grief.
Pre & Primary – Grief Encounter
Information that can support your child who may be struggling following a bereavement.
Grief & Loss | Parents Guide To Support | YoungMinds
A guide to supporting a young person who has experienced a bereavement, including information on talking about loss and where you can get support.
Divorce
Divorce & Young People’s Mental Health | Parent Guide | YoungMinds
Advice on looking after your child’s wellbeing through a separation.
divorce-separation-updated-dec-2019.pdf (youngminds.org.uk)
Advice and Information for parents to support their child
War and Conflict
Talking to children and young people about war and conflict | Place2Be
Advice on how to talk to children and young people about war and conflict, and support them if they’re struggling with the news.
Resources to be shared with the child by the parent.
Talking Mental Health – YouTube
We All Have Mental Health (Subtitled) – YouTube
Pupil SEMH Policy
