Wellbeing

At Norbury School, we aim to promote, develop, equip and prepare healthy learners for life.

We recognise that children’s mental health is a crucial factor in their overall wellbeing and can affect their learning, attainment and achievements. We are committed to making it our mission to promote resilience, positive wellbeing and mental health for our whole school community i.e. our pupils, staff and parents.

We understand wellbeing to be a state of being comfortable, healthy and happy. We aim to drive this message forward, and to ensure that mental health and well-being is “everyone’s business” across the whole school community.

We also recognise the role that stigma can play in preventing understanding and awareness of mental health issues. We therefore aim to create an open and positive culture that encourages discussion and understanding of these issues.

We will strive to create an environment that has a whole school approach, in providing excellent mental health support, understanding and intervention. We pursue this aim using both universal whole school approaches, within PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) lessons and assemblies as well as specialized, targeted approaches for identified children.

Our aim at Norbury is to help our pupils to develop the protective factors which build resilience to mental health problems and to be a school where pupils:

feel valued
have a sense of belonging
feel safe
are able to talk openly with trusted adults about their problems without feeling any stigma
have an awareness of the mental health continuum
feel safe in the knowledge that bullying is not tolerated

We put Wellbeing at the heart of our school to ensure successful learning, and commit to our policies reflecting this practise.

At Norbury, wellbeing is intrinsically linked to the PSHE curriculum

Mindfulness Information

What is the Education for Wellbeing programme?

The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families (AFNCCF) is an evidence-based children’s mental health charity with over 60 years’ experience of caring for young minds.
The Centre has been commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) to deliver an exciting new Education for Wellbeing programme. The Education for Wellbeing Programme will implement and evaluate five different mental health and wellbeing interventions across selected mainstream schools in England. The results will be published in a report to the DfE, who will incorporate the findings into their decision-making about how to support children and young people’s wellbeing. The interventions are not targeted at specific pupils but are designed to be delivered to whole classes.
Following an application from your child’s school, your child’s class will be taking part in the Education for Wellbeing programme. Your child’s class has been randomly allocated to receive Mindfulness.

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a technique than can help people with their wellbeing through learning to notice and experience what is happening in the present moment in a non-judgmental way. The aim is to increase focus on and improve self-awareness of sensations, emotions and thoughts. There are many different mindfulness techniques, but the basis of this programme is a focus on mindful breathing. An example of a mindfulness exercise is provided in the attached worksheet.
Your child’s class will learn to practise Mindfulness during the spring term of 2019. Mindfulness training will be built into the school day to ensure that your child’s lessons will not be interrupted, and will usually be delivered by your child’s class teacher for around 5 minutes each day.
All school staff delivering the mindfulness training will have been trained by experts from the AFNCCF and will have received a range of support materials to use in class.

Resources

Nine Tips for a Stress-free family life

5 Ways to Wellbeing

Mental health and wellbeing – Harrow Council

Young Harrow Foundation | Harrow Mental Health support

Mental health support for parents and carers – Place2Be