Mental health and wellbeing is a growing area of need and many of our children experience and/or need additional support for Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties (SEMH). 

As a school we have a number of different resources available to us to support children in this area, including access to a school counsellor and external professional support if required. For more information on how we support children with SEMH difficulties, please see our whole school provision map.

Please see below a list of great websites and resources out there to help and offer support for parents: 

• Kent Resilience Hub has been created as a resource to help young people, parents and carers and practitioners understand emotional wellbeing and resilience. 

       https://kentresiliencehub.org.uk/ 

• Kent Children’s and Young People’s Mental Health Service - https://www.nelft.nhs.uk/services-kent-children-young-peoples-mental-health 

• Kent and Medway Mental Wellbeing Information Hub - https://www.kentandmedwayccg.nhs.uk/mental-wellbeing-information-hub 

• Childline - https://www.childline.org.uk/toolbox/calm-zone/ 

• MindEd for Families - https://www.mindedforfamilies.org.uk/young-people 

Parents may also find the following resources helpful: 

The Zones is a programme designed by an Occupational Therapist (Leah Kuypers, 2011) to teach children about self-regulation by categorising all the different ways we feel and states of alertness we experience into four coloured zones. The Zones framework provides strategies to teach pupils to become more aware of and independent in controlling their emotions and impulses, manage their sensory needs, and improve their ability to problem solve conflicts. 

Zones of Regulation teaches children:  

• Vocabulary of emotional terms  

• How to recognise their own emotions  

• How to detect the emotions of others (read others’ facial expressions)  

• What may trigger certain emotions  

• How others may interpret their behaviour  

• Problem solving skills 

As a school we regularly use Zones of Regulation and children have participated in lessons linked to zones. We also offer small group work to help individual children develop personal zones toolkits to help them with self-regulation strategies. 

Emotion Coaching 

Emotion Coaching is built on the work of the child psychologist John Gottman.  In the UK it has been taken up by an organisation called Nurture UK and is commonly adopted in schools.  As a staff team we want all adults to use the language and approaches within Emotion Coaching to support children during times of heightened emotion and be able to guide them to find a suitable response or solution to the feelings they are experiencing.  Check out the short videos produced by Specialist Teacher Heather Woodcock, who has run staff training sessions on Emotion Coaching - it is something that parents can use at home too.