Mental Health and Well-being

Mental Health is a state of well-being in which every individual realises his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community." World Health organisation 2014

At Uplands Junior School we promote positive mental health and well-being for our whole school community (children, staff, parents and carers)., and recognise how important mental health and emotional wellbeing is to our lives in just the same way as physical health. We recognise the children's mental health is a crucial factor in their overall wellbeing and can affect their learning and achievement. We all go through ups and downs in our day to day lives but some of us also face significant life events.

Our aim is to develop the protective factors which build resilience in order to cope with such situations.

At Uplands:

All children are valued
Children are taught to be proud of who they are
Children have a sense of belonging to our community and feel safe
Children know to talk openly about their problems without feeling any stigma
Positive mental health is promoted and encouraged and is central to our school
Bullying will not be tolerated

We want all children to:

Feel confident in themselves
Feel able to talk about their emotions and feelings
Build positive and healthy relationships
Cope with the everyday stresses of life
Learn, achieve and be happy

How do we achieve this at Uplands?

Having a caring and nurturing overall ethos of "Respect for all"
Using the Art of Brilliance across school to promote positive character development (further information below)
Using the Trick Box scheme to develop coping strategies (further information below)
A well structured PSHE curriculum taught across all year groups and supported by the Jigsaw scheme
Being a rights Respecting school (Silver level)
Social, emotional and mental health assemblies both in classes and whole school
Social and emotional interventions for children who need additional support (Art therapy, Believe 2 Achieve and the Wolverhampton Mental Health Support Team)
Working in partnership with parents and external agencies in the best interests of the child

We are proud to have achieved the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools awards at both Bronze (2019) and Silver (2020) levels. The award provided school with a framework for mental health development and we were and still are committed to working towards developing excellent practice by making mental health and well being a part of our core business.

Art of Brilliance and Brilliant schools

The Art of Being Brilliant is an approach that we follow in school to help children develop their emotional intelligence. It aims to raise the level of happiness, confidence and resilience of every child; embedding positivity and a sense of personal responsibility into school and home life.

Some research has been carried out that indicated that only about 2 % of the population respond positively to situations and bounce back from setbacks. The Art of Brilliance team call these 2%ers. The rest, the 98%, the Art of Brilliance Team call ‘mood hoovers,’ as they can suck up or drain the positive energy around them by moaning and groaning. The Art of Brilliance team is a way of embedding positive thinking and positive self talk from an early age. Its aims are for the children to realise:

That they can choose to be positive in situations.
That they can take personal responsibility for their thoughts, actions, behaviour and their learning (e.g. they motivate themselves rather than be motivated by teachers and parents).
That they can have a positive impact (or negative) on those around them.
That if they choose to, they can bounce back from setbacks and view mistakes as positive learning experiences. They can develop resilience.
That random acts of kindness can make themselves, the school and home happier places.
That everyone is good at something and we feel happy if we do what we are good at. We can all ‘play to our strengths’.
That if they set themselves goals taking small steps will help them achieve them.

Trick Box

Trick box is an emotional management and personal development programme for children in KS 1 and 2. It is simple, fun and more important very effective in helping children dealing with their emotions. Uplands starting using Trick Box in September of 2020 and can already see the benefits.

There are 4 trick box areas:

Confidence (yellow cards)
Communication (blue cards)
Calm (red cards)
Creativity (green cards)

Year 3 will teach 15 tricks across the year

Year 4 will teach 18 tricks across the year

Year 5 will teach 21 tricks across the year

Year 6 will teach 24 tricks across the year

Children build their repertoire of skills as they move through the school. The tricks work on a letter box coaching model which is designed to help children manage their own emotions-this is Accept (what’s going on and how do you feel about this?), Be (how can things be better), Choose (what can you choose to do?) and Do (Do it!)

The Trick Box techniques help children to:

Recognise and self-manage emotions
Develop mindful awareness and mind-body connection
Build awareness of body language signals
Create confident decision making
Set and achieve positive goals
Develop communication skills
Problem solve and create solution thinking
Create motivation and confidence to try new things in new ways
Create long term personal resilience

For further information take a look at the Trick Box website or contact school.

Workplace Wellbeing Charter

In 2020 Uplands was successful in completing the Workplace Wellbeing charter. This demonstrates our commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of our workforce whilst making our school attractive to perspective employees. The charter is segmented into 8 topics ranging from Leadership and absence management to physical activity and healthy eating. The benefits of the charter allow our team to be at their full potential.

How can you help at home?

Children do what we do more than they do what we say. So if you want them to be positive, resilient, happy and kind then you could model the behaviour and may be use some of the language of The Art of Being Brilliant.

Some phrases you might like to use depending on the situation could be :