Wellbeing for Pupils at Herons Dale
At Herons Dale we work closely with pupils, families and staff teams to support healthy emotional development and wellbeing of our pupils.
Meg is our assistant head of wellbeing and senior mental health lead and works with pupils and families in supporting wellbeing.
We have a large team of mental health first aiders who get together on a regular basis and look at and discuss individual pupil’s wellbeing or pupil’s wellbeing as a whole.
We have our trained higher learning teaching assistant in emotional literacy (ELSA), Nicky, and she takes pupils for interventions to support their emotional development and help pupils learn new skills or coping strategies. Nicky supports our pupils in social skills, bereavement, social situations, therapeutic stories, anger management, self-esteem, real life problem-solving skills and friendship.
To support pupil’s wellbeing we also have a play therapist 4 days a week and a music therapist 1 day a week.
Herons Dale follow a variety of strategies to support pupils mental health and wellbeing for example, these include, zones of regulation, starving the anxiety gremlin, starving the anger gremlin, stories about different feelings, mindfulness, breath work, bubble time and much more!
All classes at Herons Dale start the day off with a nurture hour where pupils settle into school and they may have a chat with a familiar grown-up, they may have breakfast or they may follow their sensory diet. In this hour we aim to settle pupils and set them up for the school day.
