Mental Health and Wellbeing

"Every Mind Matters" - NHS England

At St Columba’s, we believe that every person is precious to God. We recognise the importance of supporting and enabling pupils to develop positive mental health and well-being. We endeavour to promote a supportive and caring mental health ethos that centres around our five core virtues; Be Just, Be Attentive, Be Loving, Be Wise and Be Courageous. In achieving these aims, we adopt a proactive pupil-centred approach tailored to the ever-changing needs of our pupils and the local community we serve. It is our intent that every child enjoys a welcoming, secure, happy and healthy environment where they are provided with opportunities to develop spiritual, physical and social and mental health and wellbeing which are driven by our Catholic values.

We teach Gospel values to all our children as together we celebrate our call to follow Christ the teacher in self-giving love and service through prayer and worship. Children are encouraged and empowered to recognise and realise their God-given potential, providing them with opportunities to develop their spiritual gifts. Pupils at St Columba’s are taught to recognise and explain their feelings and emotions. This includes pupils with additional needs such as Special Educational Needs and/or Disabilities and English as an Additional Language. We ensure all children know who they can talk to about their feelings and offer support externally when needed. To support the physical wellbeing of our pupils, we provide many opportunities for all to participate in a range of Physical Education and Sporting activities during and out of school hours. Through the delivery of a quality first broad and balanced curriculum, pupils are educated to live healthy lives in a calm and safe environment where children respect others. This includes teaching our pupils essential self-care skills and ways to develop positive relationship with peers. As part of being part of the Blessed Christopher Wharton family, we ensure a range of opportunities for pupils to socialise appropriately with children from other age groups within and beyond St Columba’s through various events such as tennis tournaments and collective worships across the academic year. It is our intent that with this shared vision across our Blessed Christopher Wharton Trust, every child will leave St Columba’s equipped with positive mental health strategies that our pupils can take with them when the transition to secondary school and later into adult life.

Healthy Minds Chartermark with Bradford Council:

We are pleased to announce that St Columba's has achieved the criteria for the Bradford Healthy Minds Silver Award by achieving a clear whole-school approach to mental health and well-being which is outstanding.

Chartermark Report Highlights:

• The 5 virtues are embedded into everyday practice; with a focus on one per half term. This has provided a shift from school rules and instead provides a way of being that supports and promotes skills for life.
• The school have a Nurture Provision which focuses on the principles of nurture.
• The school have a Well-being Committee in place of 6 staff from various areas within the school, who meet regularly to plan ‘morale-boosting events’ as well as ‘being on hand for a chat’.
• The Senior Leadership team are continuously reviewing staff workload and considers this when introducing new initiatives. The Senior Leadership Team have access to supervision from an outside agency (Education Support) and the SENDCo can access a coaching model of supervision from the Trust as and when needed.
• The school has a robust schedule of staff CPD to ensure colleagues have the appropriate skills and knowledge necessary to support pupils with their Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs. This includes training delivered by external stakeholders as well as access to the National College resources where there is a wealth of online training resources for staff to access as and when needed.
• St Columba’s has developed a personalised, progressive, and engaging Social, Moral, and Spiritual Curriculum (SMSC) to build a supportive, acceptive, and understanding culture in line with their mission statement: ‘Every person is precious to God’. The curriculum includes developing mental health strategies such as self-help, meditation, and breathing techniques.
• Recently, the school has introduced the use of Boxall Profiling to monitor the impact of interventions and provision in Nurture which is overseen by the school Nurture Lead who uses this data to create individual targets and a timetable of activities to support progress towards these. Each child who accesses Nurture has a Nurture Book, with individual targets on the front page and a record of the work/ activities they have completed. In addition, some pupils also have access to a Feelings and Emotions Books, which offers a reference point to the work they have done which can be taken into different situations to support emotional regulation.
• The school plans a range of events across the year that they invite parents/ carers to attend e.g. coffee mornings, toddler group, and events during the upcoming Healthy Living Week. During parent's evening, the kitchen is open for parents/carers to have a hot meal as well as the SENDCo available for additional meetings for parents/ carers. Parents and carers are also invited on school trips.
• The school are committed to promoting pupil voice. Recently, the pupils enjoyed 'Pupil take over School Day' where they had the opportunity to take on the role of adults for the day. Pupil surveys have taken place as well as a range of tools used to collate pupil voice.
• There are peer support programmes in place such as Playground Buddies, Minnie Vinnies (promote Catholicsm), and Guardian Angels (year 6 and early years buddying system).

My Happy Mind:

This year, St Columba's has introduced a NHS approved programme called MyHappymind. MyHappymind is all based around helping children to understand how their brain works and to support them in developing positive skills and habits to be their very best selves. MyHappymind is delivered in schools by class teachers through a series of interactive lessons and then the children apply these learning throughout the day.