Our Policy
At INSPIRE we are committed to promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing to all students, their families and members of staff and governors. Our open culture allows students’ voices to be heard, and through the use of effective policies and procedures we ensure a safe and supportive environment for all affected – both directly and indirectly – by mental health issues.

We have developed a Trust-wide policy which is a guide for all staff – including non-teaching and governors – outlining INSPIRE’s approach to promoting mental health and emotional wellbeing.

How else do we support Mental health & well-being across our Trust?

All Governing bodies have a lead for mental health & well-being with a clearly defined roleWe hold termly network meetings to develop and share good practiceWe hold termly coaching & development working groups using case studies to develop knowledge and practice which are facilitated by our Educational PsychologistTwice yearly wellbeing surveys across the whole TrustWe have a well-being strand in our People StrategyWe have invested in a central Inclusion & well-being team

Why is well-being of pupils so important?
When children and young people have good levels of wellbeing, it helps them to:

learn and explore the worldfeel, express and manage positive and negative emotionsform and maintain good relationships with otherscope with, and manage, change, setbacks and uncertaintydevelop and thrive.
When children and young people look after their mental health and develop their coping skills it can help them to boost their resilience, self-esteem and confidence. It can also help them learn to manage their emotions, feel calm, and engage positively with their education – which can, in turn, improve their academic attainment.

At our schools we believe in nurturing the WHOLE child- good mental health & self esteem go hand in hand with better academic achievement and our aim is to help ALL our children to achieve their potential.

Wellbeing for Parents and FamiliesSupporting Parents
We recognise the family plays a key role in influencing children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing; we will work in partnership with parents and carers to promote emotional health and wellbeing by:

Ensuring all parents are aware of and have access to promoting social and emotional wellbeing and preventing mental health problems;Highlighting sources of information and support about common mental health issues through our communication channels (website, newsletters etc.);Offering support to help parents or carers develop their parenting skills. This may involve providing information or offering small, group-based programmes run by community nurses (such as school nurses and health visitors) or other appropriately trained health or education practitioners; andEnsuring parents, carers and other family members living in disadvantaged circumstances are given the support they need to participate fully in activities to promote social and emotional wellbeing. This will include support to participate in any parenting sessions, by offering a range of times for the sessions or providing help with transport and childcare. We recognise this might involve liaison with family support agencies.
We have an open-door policy which means we want families to feel they can come and talk to us about anything. Our Pastoral teams across the Trust are highly trained and knowledgeable and can signpost families to the support they need.

Mrs Hughes
Mrs Hughes is our Learning Mentor and Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead, and she is here to support all children and families who need it. She has a wealth of knowledge and experience and can identify where additional help can be sourced and who by.

Please do not hesitate to visit or contact the school to arrange a meeting with Mrs Hughes.

Our Well-being Curriculum
Well-being provision across our Trust is a thread running through everything we do.

Our PSHCE and RSE curriculums have been developed to be progressive and cover aspects of mental health & well-being across different strands. Mental health & well-being is not only taught and discussed in these lessons though as we see it as a fundamental part of the skills and knowledge we teach our children.

Assemblies are carefully planned to ensure mental health is something we talk about all the time- constantly building on children’s skills, giving them tools to help them manage their own feelings and emotional health.

We have also developed representation and diversity across our curriculum areas to further develop mental health & wellbeing.

Most of our schools have well-being check ins daily with all their pupils, and there has been heavy investment in providing all schools with books to support the teaching of areas of well-being.

Our designated school lead for mental health & well-being is: Mrs P Hughes
To support leaders and staff in schools we have introduced a designated Mental Health & Wellbeing lead in all of our schools.

PURPOSE OF THE ROLE

To support the Headteacher and SENCo in the implementation & reviewing of the school’s mental health and wellbeing strategy and policy.
To support the staff to understand the part they play in supporting the mental health & well-being of their pupils and to give them access to the CPD and resources they need to be able to do this effectively. To ensure pupils receive the support they need in wave 1,2 3 interventions to make them mentally resilient and promote positive mental health. To provide a whole school approach to support staff wellbeing and to enable them to manage their own wellbeing and mental health.
WHAT IS MENTAL HEALTH & WELL-BEING?

We all have mental health. Your mental health affects how you feel, think and act. It refers to your emotional, psychological and social wellbeing. Your mental health can change on a daily basis and over time, and can be affected by a range of factors.

It’s important to look after your mental health, as you would look after your physical health. Your state of wellbeing affects how you cope with stress, relate to others and make choices. It also plays a part in your relationships with your family, community, colleagues and friends.

The Department for Education has developed a Wellbeing Charter for all staff working within education settings in England and sets out the commitments to protect and promote the wellbeing of education staff.

At Inspire we recognise the value of promoting wellbeing across all of our academies and have signed up to the charter.

However, as a trust, we go want to go further than this, and have set up a working party to support well-being across the Trust and to develop our own Well-being charter which will go above and beyond the DfE charter.

We are also committed to reducing workload for our staff. We have started to develop our own Trust curriculum complete with resources to reduce the time teachers need to spend on planning and also allow our teachers to take their PPA time at home. We are driving down unnecessary paperwork and tasks across our Trust to support staff further.

We carry out two staff well-being surveys every year and act on feedback – we value the opinions and ideas we get from our staff team.

We held our first Trust wide conference in May 2023 bringing staff from across the Trust to celebrate our achievements and this is now planned to be an annual event.