A supportive place to learn and work

At Northlands we are committed to promoting the good mental health and well being of our children staff and wider community. 

 

Mental health and wellbeing support for children: 

 

We seek to support the wellbeing of our pupils in a number of different ways: 

  • Letting pupils know that we are there to listen to an support their needs by creating Network Hands of adults they can talk to. 
  • Providing pastoral support via our Pastoral Leader when pupils need something beyond a short intervention. 
  • Recruiting and training Peer Wellbeing Champions who support pupil well being, they currently: 
  1. Run a meditation club at lunchtimes.
  2. Run a Mindfulness colouring club at lunchtimes.
  3. Support peers when they request it.
  4. Signpost peers to support if they need it. 

 

Please see our latest parent newsletter about how we support in school and how parents can support their pupils: 

Mental health and wellbeing support for staff: 

 

 

Wellbeing is the state of being comfortable, healthy or happy.

At Northlands we strive to ensure that the wellbeing of staff is the best it can be. Our Basic Northlands Wellbeing Offer is based upon:

  1. a NEU survey of 10,000+ schools and college staff and their reflections on wellbeing.
  2. Northlands staff voice collected from staff surveys, feedback and governor feedback.

Two overriding factors that came out of both were that staff wellbeing was heavily influenced by how much support they felt they had as well as the amount of time they felt they had to fulfil their duties. Our Basic offer outlines what staff are entitled to as a universally. This is supplemented with further offers which vary dependent on need.We aim to ensure our staff feel well supported and valued in school.  Our basic offer - outlined below - is also supplemented by additional support packages which are sometimes implemented in response to need. 

What we offer

Open door policy

 

The senior leadership team have an open-door policy: there is no need to wait for things to get tricky before seeing myself or Katie. We are also committed to a shared approach to problem solving rather than making judgements.

Daily wellbeing check

              

The senior leadership team will endeavour to check in with staff members at least once a day to simply say Hello and How are you today?

Wellbeing board

 

The wellbeing board is located in a space no staff member can avoid: the photocopy room. The board is used to celebrate each other and express kindness about how a staff member carries out their role.

Staff Lunches

 

Towards the end of each half term, staff come together and have lunch as a whole school. This isn’t compulsory so there is no added pressure.

Parent meetings

 

To prevent long evenings, parent meetings are held during the school day. We give staff back around 27hours: a typical school holds their parents’ meetings over 3 days (4-7pm) 3 times a year. Cumulatively this is 27hours.

An hour is an hour!

 

Staff meetings start at 330 and end at 430. We start and end on time allowing staff to plan their time precisely. We know -according to the NEU -that such examples of timekeeping have a large impact on wellbeing.

Getting the job done

 

We appreciate that education theory is important but we do not use staff meetings just to discuss theory- we use it to get the job done! In a SEN staff meeting -for example- staff will be given a brief injection of theory and then time to apply this in their planning for the next day.

School closure

 

School is opened at 7:25am and closed at 5:30pm. This is to ensure that staff leave the premises at a reasonable time and there is no culture of staying late. Numerous sources of research suggest that working longer hours is not necessarily more productive and can be detrimental to wellbeing.

Subject Leader Time

 

 

Due to staff having a number of subjects to lead, weekly leadership time of 1hr for English and Maths leaders and 2hrs for non-core each half a term have been allocated.

 

Mental health and wellbeing support for the wider community: 

 

We seek to support the wellbeing of the wider community in a number of different ways: 

  • Supporting parents to support children academically at home (parent workshops: online and in person)
  • Supporting parents to support children pastorally at home (Early Help offered in which we sign post and support)
  • Encouraging and supporting parent workshops to support parent wellbeing e.g. we currently have
  1. Domestic Abuse and Violence Support workshops
  2. Money management workshops