Mental Health and Wellbeing
WELLBEING POLICY
WELLBEING AT BOLTON-BY-BOWLAND
Mental Health & Emotional Well-being
At Bolton-by-Bowland, we believe in promoting positive mental health and emotional well-being to ensure that the school is a community where everyone feels able to thrive. Our school ethos, values and vision statement underpin everything that we do.
The World Health Organisation defines mental health as a state of well-being in which every individual achieves their potential, copes with the normal stresses of life, works productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their community. Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel and act.
Good mental health and well-being is just as important as good physical health. Like physical health, mental health can range across a spectrum from healthy to unwell; it can fluctuate on a daily basis and change over time.
What we do in school
There is much evidence that pupils learn more effectively, if they are happy in their work, believe in themselves and have good relationships with their teachers. A key component for well-being to be developed is that children feel safe at school, that school is supporting them and that they belong.
In school, we teach children about what it means to have good mental health and well-being throughout our curriculum and daily practice.
Our PSHE curriculum focuses specifically on developing children’s social and emotional skills which can prevent poor mental health from developing and help all children cope effectively with setbacks and remain healthy. It is about helping children to understand and manage their thoughts, feelings and behaviour and build skills that help them to thrive, such as working in a team, persistence, and self-awareness.
Wellbeing Warriors
We are in the process of appointing this year's Wellbeing Warriors.
We started our wellbeing journey three years ago on a very positive note and had two year 6 children as our Wellbeing representatives. They had meetings with our Mental Health First Aider (Mrs Royle), ran wellbeing clubs, and thought of ideas we could carry out in school to promote positive mental health and wellbeing.
We hope to build on this success during the current academic year and broaden the activities we offer throughout the school to increase pupils' knowledge and understanding of what positive mental health looks like.
We celebrate ~Hello Yellow day annually in support of Young Minds https://youngminds.org.uk/get-involved/how-to-fundraise/helloyellow/
We have a Positive Mental health and Wellbeing Policy and it is actively promoted in classes.
The school council also decided to raise money for https://www.mind.org.uk/ in memory of a parent.
We have involved outside agencies such as https://www.growyourmindset.co.uk/ who come into school to deliver workshops for classes, groups and individuals.