This is the core to any Emotionally Friendly Setting. Staff who are motivated, resilient and reliable and collectively work together as a cohesive team define an outstanding school. It is well understood how staff well-being impacts on their performance and achieving high levels of staff well-being consistently increases pupil attainment and outcomes, improves pupil well-being and enhances all aspects of the setting.
About the Emotionally Friendly Settings programme
Developed by educational psychologists from their extensive experience of working with children and young people, Emotionally Friendly Settings is an evidence-based approach, whole setting approach to emotional health and well-being.
You will find that it provides you with the best proven methods, tools and support to help nurture happy, successful children and young people by effectively identifying and responding to their broad emotional needs.
Based around four modules, Emotionally Friendly Settings will support you to promote the positive mental and emotional health of the children and young people entrusted to your setting.
Whole setting and classroom practice
A happy, calm and positive classroom is the foundation on which we all aspire to be able to teach and help children and young people to thrive and succeed. A classroom encouraging positive emotions widens thought, improves creativity, and most importantly, improves academic achievement.
Assessing children and young people's needs
Accurately identifying a child or young person’s needs is the cornerstone of being able to help them. Not least, assessments provide us with the capacity to:
- clearly identify the child or young person’s needs
- highlight which interventions will help the child or young person make the most progress
- share with others to develop a shared understanding of the child or young person’s needs
- Aid referrals to additional and targeted services (e.g. Educational Psychology, Child and Adolescent Mental health Services(CAMHS))
Supporting individual children and young people
With about 20% of school-age children and young people experiencing some form of mental health difficulty, this presents a major challenge in terms of how we can best help and support these children and young people . We’ve searched through all the potential interventions available, identified whether they are effective in helping children and young people to make progress and selected those which are practical and usable within the realities of an educational context.
We will guide you through a cyclical process to plan and take action using a comprehensive whole setting approach. By providing you with the best available options for improving children and young people’s well-being, we provide you with the flexibility to select and tailor programmes and approaches to your setting’s local needs.
The Emotionally Friendly Settings process:
As an Emotionally Friendly Setting you’ll be given access to our Emotionally Friendly Settings manuals. These not only include all the audits you will need but also develop each of the four modules, giving you the theory behind the practice, practical and creative solutions to try in your own setting, and recommended resources to support your practice.
Our Educational Psychology team will train and raise awareness of emotional and mental well-being across your whole setting for all staff. Using the information from your staff, and where relevant pupil, audits, we will then meet with your EFS champions and senior leaders to action plan for improvements in the delivery of well-being across your setting. We’ll advise you on how to implement these changes and monitor your progress.
A flexible, whole setting approach to improving children and young people's mental health and emotional well-being
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If you've got any questions about Emotionally Friendly Settings please get in touch.