Mental Health and Wellbeing
Here at Horizons Specialist Academy Trust, we are committed to promoting and protecting our children, young people positive mental health and wellbeing of , families, communities and the whole the staff team.
We are part of the national ambition and principles set out in Future in Mind – promoting, protecting and improving our children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing. To this end, we have Future in Minds Champions placed in each of our Academies within the Trust to help support with the mental health and wellbeing of our staff and students. We also have recently trained several members of staff in "Mental Health First Aid" to give advice and support in times of crisis for any of our stakeholders.
At Westlands we actively engage with agencies such as CAMHS, the NHS and charity organisations to work in partnership to provide sector-leading mental health & wellbeing support and advice. By ensuring a joined up approach to the needs of all we are able to remove the stigma around this difficult and sensitive issue.
What we do
At Westlands, our staff have received in-depth training around the issues of attachment and trauma. Our staff take part in Attachment Aware and Trauma Informed Practice and understand that there are many neuroscience-based barriers to learning. We use daily check-ins and check-outs to evaluate and support our young learners whilst adopting a "Team Around the Child" approach to ensuring the removal of the barriers to learning.
To help compliment our practice, our staff receive continual training and CPD sessions to keep up-to-date with the latest developments and learn new skills and abilities to ensure a bespoke package of care is delivered. some of the CPD and training received has been provided by:
Daisy Chain - Awareness around autism and neurodiversity
Touchbase - Training for those who are supporting children and young people who have a history of trauma
Future Steps - Enhancing support in treating individuals with a range of complex difficulties and conditions
We have also been proactive in sourcing and developing training and CPD around Emotion Coaching, becoming attachment and trauma aware, understanding other mental health issues in young people. Currently, we have five fully-trained staff working as Mental Health First Aid Specialists who work alongside our Senior Mental Health Lead.
Helpful resources – General organisations:
The Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families
https://www.annafreud.org/
Telephone: 0207 794 2313
Action for Happiness
https://www.actionforhappiness.org/
Samaritans
https://www.samaritans.org/
Telephone: 116 123 (any time)
Young Minds
https://youngminds.org.uk
Telephone: 0808 802 5544 (weekdays 9.30 – 16.00)
CAMHS Crisis Team (Teesside)
Telephone: 0300 013 2000