Support for Emotional and Mental Health

At Blue Coat we take a whole school approach to supporting everyone’s mental health and wellbeing. 

 Within our PSHE curriculum, we focus on developing the understanding that we all have good and bad days and good and bad periods in our life. This is normal and even when we feel despairing we can remind ourselves that it will get better. We encourage the children to develop empathy and understanding for others and to be a good friend when someone is unhappy. This is a core skill towards being Future Ready; we will interact with others all our lives and the better we understand them and our own responses, the more positive those interactions and relationships will be. 

In addition, our commitment to Opal Play ensures the children can express themselves and explore their limits, building strong team skills and developing personal understanding of their own strengths and limitations. 

There are times when an individual may need additional support, whether with anxiety, friendships or dealing with difficult emotions and we have several options available in school for this. We may offer set times with a key adult for the child to talk about what is troubling them or to touch base to see how things are going. There is also the option of running a group intervention around a particular topic, such as friendship. For those who need individual support we have an ELSA and a trainee play therapist working in school. They are able to offer a set number of sessions to identified individuals to help them work through this difficult time.