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Support Staff- Having a team of staff within the school environment specifically tasked with dealing with and helping to prevent mental health in pupils and staff. These people can be approached if pupils or staff have any concerns or need to speak about their mental health. These members of staff will also be involved in contacting and connecting other organisations involved in the mental health sector. Create a safe environment-This is extremely important for staff and students. All members of the school community should be able to express themselves and feel safe to explore new things. With a safe environment, individuals are more likely to be able to share concerns they have so that problems can be resolved quickly and don’t develop into more serious problems.Staff knowledgeable about mental health-It is important that staff are adequately trained to deal with mental health themselves and know the signs to look for in children they teach. This will allow them to intervene quickly and help reduce the stigma associated with mental health. PSHE + PE provision- PE has been proven to aid mental health, improving traits such as resilience which will hopefully led to less children suffering from mental health issues as they feel more able to deal with the stresses that life presents.Partnerships with other services-Services can support the support staff and ensure their outreach is heightened. These services can come in and run sessions/assemblies with classes so that their understanding of mental health is developed. These services can get involved in more serious cases of mental health and employ a wider range of strategies to overcome individuals difficulties. By Anonymous

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Support Staff- Having a team of staff within the school environment specifically tasked with dealing with and helping to prevent mental health in pupils and staff. These people can be approached if pupils or staff have any concerns or need to speak about their mental health. These members of staff will also be involved in contacting and connecting other organisations involved in the mental health sector. Create a safe environment-This is extremely important for staff and students. All members of the school community should be able to express themselves and feel safe to explore new things. With a safe environment, individuals are more likely to be able to share concerns they have so that problems can be resolved quickly and don’t develop into more serious problems.Staff knowledgeable about mental health-It is important that staff are adequately trained to deal with mental health themselves and know the signs to look for in children they teach. This will allow them to intervene quickly and help reduce the stigma associated with mental health. PSHE + PE provision- PE has been proven to aid mental health, improving traits such as resilience which will hopefully led to less children suffering from mental health issues as they feel more able to deal with the stresses that life presents.Partnerships with other services-Services can support the support staff and ensure their outreach is heightened. These services can come in and run sessions/assemblies with classes so that their understanding of mental health is developed. These services can get involved in more serious cases of mental health and employ a wider range of strategies to overcome individuals difficulties. By Anonymous

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1. Coffie mornings - Taking the time out of your day to talk about and think about mental health

1. Having at least one professional trained mental health coriander – Someone to go as a point of contact

1. Safe learning environment – so children feel safe. This will help to improve learning and wellbeing

1. Sense of belonging – So children and staff want to come into work/school and know they are valued

1. Education – Knowing the signs so you are able to spot them early and help.

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Five key things that a school needs to support and develop mental health and wellbeing?

1.      Develop a support network within schools

2.      Prioritise mental health by having teachers trained within each school (quarterly training)- By doing this, it will help the teachers to be open minded and relate to the stress of their job therefore acknowledging they may need support too. By teachers being trained, it will make them more effective in supporting a child as they will have a better understanding on how to support the child.

3.      Implementing initiatives and programmes â€“ ensure high quality interventions. Integrating the learning into the school curriculum.

4.      Develop a body system- gives the child another person to go to as they will feel more supportive when thereâ€™s more people to go to.

5.       Express the importance of mental health with parents as this has shown to add strength and depth in the childâ€™s attitude towards mental health and better productivity in class.

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Five key things that a school needs in order to support & develop mental health & well-being:

1.    Talk about things – provide verbal feedback and positive compliments and encourage children, if pupils and teachers interact with one another then issues become easier to identify, this will also help to build students’ knowledge and understanding of mental health and wellbeing.

2.    Create a safe place within the school, this could be a certain area or room in the school, allowing the children to have a place to go if they are becoming overwhelmed or going through a tough period, where they might need to have some time to themselves or speak to someone about something.

3.    Staff should be trained to spot mental health issues straight away, so they can provide help for the children involved.

4.    Have better open relationships with parents and pupils, this links to the first point as it will help build knowledge of the subject with parents and pupils, also it will help the parents to identify these problems at an early stage, so they can provide help.

5.    Appoint a mental health lead, this will help train teachers and support staff within the school, also be a first point of call for staff and pupils struggling with mental health issues.

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What are the five keys things that a school need in order to support and develop mental health and wellbeing?

1.    Openly discuss mental health- take away some of the stigma that surrounds mental health. Trying to integrate it into the curriculum more – make PSHE more important within schools – don’t drop it to replace with other subjects and finishing work.

2.    Create a safe space within the school - making student feel – comfy seats for meetings or snacks and drinks available. Create a sense of belonging in the school environment – buddy system so that students feel responsibility and can seek support.

3.    Ensuring that basic psychological needs are met- for example the breakfast club initiatives, snacks available, drinkable water available in rooms. Breakfast club can create a good basis to start the day of learning and ensure all students are not hungry throughout the lessons, so they can concentrate. Ensure that students are offered comfort breaks between lessons.

4.    Effective teacher training- enabling staff to feel comfortable and knowledgeable about issues students may have and to effectively resolve and help in those situations. Staff will feel more comfortable knowing they can help the students and provide them with the correct information and knowledge.

5.    The employment of pastoral staff – In-school councillors, pastoral leaders, CAMHS, SENCO staff. Thus meaning there are places and people for children to talk about their problems and enabling more professionals to help the student with their issues.

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Five things schools could do to support and develop mental health and wellbeing

-          Trained staff

The school could run a training class for members of staff, so that they can check to see how mentally fit some of the members of staff are and so they know what to look out for when it comes to students.

-          Scheduled meeting

The school can organise scheduled meetings for students to see how they are doing with school and if they are suffering from any mental health and any other issues that they are having. The reason that the school can make this movement towards meetings is to make sure that students are healthy and are doing well and if they have any issues that they have they can just let it out and bring up what is bothering them. Another reason why would be because if they have scheduled meetings, students will not miss a meeting because if a teacher tells them that they have a meeting at this time, the student will forget and not go to the meeting but if it was arranged and scheduled for a certain time, then they will go.

-          Extra curricular

Extracurricular meetings and activities would be designed to give the student choice on whether they want to attend or not. The extracurricular groups would be aimed more at students who are in need of help for mental wellbeing and would also be a good time in order to train up some of the older students who may wish to help in some way as some of the younger students may prefer to approach another student with their mental health problems instead of approaching an adult or a teacher.

-          Funding

The schools would require funding to be able to either get members of staff in to talk to the staff and then students for whenever they’re scheduled to come in, or the school will have to fund for their staff to go and attend mental health and wellbeing courses so that they’re trained to lead lessons with in the schools. The negative to funding only one or two members of staff is that the staff could decide to leave the school leaving them with no mental health and wellbeing specialist

-          Training for older students

The school could do some training for students who are about to leave school and teach them how to deal with mental health in younger people and show them the ways to deal and help with young students with mental health. The reason that the school could add this into the school system is to give them the experience of knowledge to help students who are suffering from severe issues of mental health and give them the opportunity to give out a helping hand.