Well-being and Nurture

Well-being

At Greenholm Primary School, we aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing of every member of our school community and recognize how important mental health, physical health and wellbeing is to our lives. We recognize that children’s mental health and overall wellbeing can affect their learning and achievement. Within Greenholm, a key aspect of our school community is ensuring our children can self-regulate their emotions and manage their stresses of daily life appropriately, and are supported to achieve their full potential.

Well-being and the Curriculum

  • Through our Personal, Social, Health, Relationships Education (PSHRE), our children learn about what they can do to maintain positive mental health, what can affect their mental health, how they can help reduce the stigma surrounding mental health issues, and whom they can talk to for help.
  • Greenholm Primary School offers Nurture Provision, which is a tailored approach to meeting the well-being and mental health needs of our children.
  • Children take part in weekly Golden Time sessions and Years 5 and 6 take part in ‘Greenholms Citizenship Project’ where the activity is based around looking after our mental well-being.
  • Staff is aware of well-being strategies they can use in the classroom such as mindfulness and yoga.
  • Within the National Curriculum, every child has a minimum of two hours of physical education each week as physical education is shown to promote positive mental health.
  • Additionally, we run sports activities during lunchtimes and after school to increase the experiences our children have. We also promote the ‘Daily Mile’ philosophy, which is proven to benefit cognition and mental health.
  • We promote healthy eating throughout the school and in our PSHRE curriculum. Children take part in outdoor learning and gardening where they learn to tend to vegetables and herbs. 
  • On our farm, we have a variety of different animals, which the children get to learn about and care for over their time at the school.
  • The DSL team monitors the wellbeing of our disadvantaged and vulnerable children regularly, speaking to parents and outside agencies when needed.
  • Members of our DSL team are ‘Mental First Aiders’
  • We include Mental Health Awareness Week in the school calendar and plan activities for the whole school community.
  • During their time at Greenholm Primary school, we want to make sure that our children are exposed to a wide range of experiences and gain the life skills needed to live in modern-day Britain. Such experiences which promote mental health include using our links with the Birmingham Hippodrome, taking part in inter-school competitions and running school community events.

Nurture Provision

Nurture Groups are part of the school’s inclusion and PSHRE (Personal, Social, Health, Relationships Education) provision. There is an abundance of research that children’s learning is most effective when the child has a sense of emotional well-being, good self-esteem, and a feeling of belonging to their school community. Therefore, at Greenholm, we created Nurture Groups in 2017 to support our children to develop their personal skills and emotional development in a safe environment.  Nurture groups of between 6 – 8 children take place in ‘The Den’.  The children are carefully brought together to make a balanced and functional group. ‘The Den’ is designed to be a bridge between home and school and therefore space where children can feel safe and secure.  The room is designed to be warm and welcoming in order to provide a consistent, predictable, and safe place for our children.

Selection of Pupils

At Greenholm, we carefully select children whose needs have been identified by their class teacher and the pastoral team. A discussion then takes place with the nurture staff to plan accordingly to help the children develop their skills.

Nurture Curriculum

At Greenholm, we use the nurture groups to respond to the specific needs of the children for example:

  • Friendship difficulties
  • Social Skills
  • Bereavement and Loss
  • Low Self-Esteem
  • Family Illness or break up
  • Classroom Skills – sharing, listening

Support

We know that everyone experiences life changes that can make us feel vulnerable and lost at times, therefore we appreciate that anyone may need emotional support. Due to this, we have complied a list of services and support available to us all.

We offer different levels of support:

Universal Support– To meet the needs of all our pupils through our overall ethos and our wider curriculum. For instance, developing resilience for all.

Additional support– For those who may have short term needs and those who may have been made vulnerable by life experiences such as bereavement.  

Targeted support– For pupils who need more differentiated support and resources or specific targeted interventions such as wellbeing groups or personal mentors.