School Support for Children

We aim to help all our children feel a deep sense of belonging to our school community.

Our RSE curriculum helps children learn how to stay mentally healthy, including developing resilience and building healthy relationships. The curriculum includes wellbeing and mindfulness lessons (see our PSHE website for more information).

We teach our children to recognise and understand the impact of their emotions through our caring approach to relationships, emotional regulation and Zones of Regulation. See Zones of Regulation website for more information.

We encourage all children to share concerns with a trusted adult and use worry boxes in classrooms or throughout lessons, if they prefer to share worries in writing anonymously.

Our library and classrooms books and resources reflect a diverse range of characters, authors, cultures so that children can identify with others who will share similarities with themselves (see our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion page for more information).

We also offer ELSA intervention which helps children to better understand the barriers they may be facing with learning. Our ELSAs are warm, kind and caring staff members who want to make children feel happy in school and to reach their potential socially, emotionally and academically.

At All Saints, we are committed to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of all our pupils. As part of our pastoral support, some children may be offered sessions through Jigsaw Therapeutic Services, which provides therapeutic play support in schools.

These sessions give children a safe and supportive space to explore their feelings through play and creative activities with a trained practitioner. Therapeutic play can help children who may be experiencing worries, difficulties managing emotions, challenges in friendships, or changes in their lives. The aim of the sessions is to help children develop confidence, improve emotional wellbeing, build resilience and learn positive ways to understand and manage their feelings.

Children are usually referred for this support through the Deputy Inclusion Lead and/or Inclusion Lead, and parents and carers are always informed and involved in the process.

At All Saints, we recognise that physical movement can play an important role in supporting children’s emotional wellbeing. We use the Stormbreak programme to help pupils develop strategies to support their mental health and wellbeing.

Stormbreak uses short, movement-based activities to help children understand and manage their emotions. Through structured sessions, pupils explore themes such as resilience, self-awareness, confidence, focus and emotional regulation.

These activities help children to:

recognise and understand their feelings
develop strategies to manage strong emotions
build resilience and confidence
improve focus and readiness for learning

Some pupils may take part in small group sessions where the activities are tailored to support children who may be experiencing emerging emotional difficulties or who would benefit from additional wellbeing support.

The programme provides children with practical tools they can use in everyday school life to help them regulate their emotions, feel calmer and engage positively with learning.