Wellbeing at the heart of the school

Staff and pupils at Huyton with Roby CE Primary School are celebrating achieving their Wellbeing Award for Schools (WAS) throughout lockdown.

School award co-ordinator, Georgina Carr said: “Mental health and wellbeing has always been a priority for the school but more so than ever during the lockdowns. We knew we had to pull together to support our whole school community and that’s what we did.

“We created our ‘change team’ made up of teachers, parents, children and our chair of governors and the children blew us away with their thoughtful and creative ideas. “

In January, assessor Dr Helen Mills visited the school to conduct the final evaluation and commented “Staff have an increased awareness and understanding of mental health and are confident to talk about their own mental health. Staff are confident in recognising the factors that affect their children and families mental health and know how to refer for support to ensure that children and their families receive support quickly, preventing escalation of mental health issues.” 

“The award evidence and interviews demonstrated how extensive, innovative and open this feature is, with staff going above and beyond what is expected to ensure that the whole school community is supported.” 

Headteacher, Mrs Stratford said: “We are so grateful and proud of our whole school community. Moving forward, we plan to keep mental health and wellbeing at the heart of our school. We have started a wellbeing podcast written and recorded by our pupils. We are planning fundraising events to transform a woodland area on our school grounds in to ‘wellbeing woodland’ and we will continue to listen to the voice of our pupils.”

The full report can be found on the school’s website but here are some of their favourite quotes from pupils and parents: 

“I like doing work, the more I do it, the easier it gets, I keep going. We have extra lessons on wellbeing like dodge ball, cosmic kids, daily mile and dance, I like it, and it gets our brains going and keeps our bodies and heads healthy. We have two wellbeing warriors in class who speak up and help children.” 

“We have change team meetings and talked about what we can change, we came up with the worry box to put our feelings in, we help children understand about wellbeing with the five ways wellbeing flower, it’s fun.” 

“The wellbeing work is amazing at helping children, my son is a wellbeing warrior and it’s helped him grow in confidence; its amazing. The school has a welcoming environment, my child runs in to school, the children look so happy; it’s an amazing place. Concerns are dealt with straight away.”