Emotional Health and Wellbeing

At Clifton we are committed to promoting the emotional health and wellbeing of our children, families and staff. We do this in a variety of ways.

Children

We strive to ensure that we care for our pupils emotionally and physically, so that they leave us ready for Secondary school.

We teach comprehensive Mental Health and Physical Health programmes of work from Nursery to Year 6 that form part of our wider PSHE curriculum. Our programmes of work teach children about friendships, managing feelings, coping with loss, strengths and challenges, as well as specific units that focus on how our brains work to control our thoughts, feelings and behaviour and how these are all connected.

In addition, we have a rich and varied programme of extra-curricular clubs that provide children with the opportunity to develop talents and skills.

We have a team of Learning Mentors who work closely with Phase Leaders to offer support to children when they might need it. In addition, we often seek advice from external agencies who provide us with key strategies and programmes of support for individual children.

We also have a strong School Council, where children are able to represent their class and talk about issues that are important to them.

Meet Bella and Ruby! They love working at Clifton. Learn how they increase confidence, promote emotional well-being and improve learning for our children

Families

Alongside our curriculum provision for our pupils, we develop good relationships with and signpost our families to a number of organisations that support families’ physical and mental health.

We encourage our families to be physically active by; delivering clubs for pupils to attend, providing opportunities for families to take part in physical activity at school and building relationships with organisations that deliver fitness activities. These include: The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS,) local Park Runs, holiday schemes and sporting camps and clubs.

Furthermore, we are aware that many of our families are at risk of suffering from socio-economic deprivation and mental and emotional health problems.

We encourage children and adults to walk or cycle to school and are part of the Modeshift Stars and Living Streets programmes. We regularly run health mornings and parents coffee mornings to address issues that parents/careers may have, tailoring them to specific needs. We have promoted Street Closures to promote sustainable living and community cohesion.

We actively seek to assist families in this way by working with organisations that can help them. Alongside referring them to specific assistance, we also have excellent relationships with the local Children's Centre, various women's support groups and forums.

Clifton play a major role in delivering the Balsall Heath Carnival, which is the biggest annual event in the local community. We have ensured that this has an inter-generational and physical activity theme, in the build up to the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Staff

We have a staff wellbeing committee at Clifton that is representative of the wider staff body. Our wellbeing committee meet half termly to discuss issues and solutions around wellbeing, workload and emotional health.

We have also invested in external agencies to provide whole school training for strategies to improve emotional wellbeing, as well as a staff care package for any members of staff needing to access this.