One of our school aims is that we respect the thoughts, beliefs and personal qualities of those around us and act with kindness and tolerance, treating one another in a way that accepts that we are individuals and have separate thoughts, feelings and needs. As part of our commitment to the wellbeing of our students, staff and stakeholders, we have committed to an audit process called the âWellbeing Awardâ. This is not an award as such, but a promise of our commitment of  funding and staff resource to ensure that we do the best job we can to promote and protect positive emotional wellbeing and mental health education and support. We have to develop an action plan, based upon what strategies we could use to improve services and offer additional opportunities to support and promote mental health and wellbeing. Any parent is welcome to be involved in this process.
Some of the positive feedback we have received from parents has been really warm and supportive with some recognition for staff members who you have worked with, but as ever we have some work to do. So far the following themes have emerged which may enable us to improve services:
You said:
- You wanted to know more about the wellbeing award. The information in the parent bulletin could have been more detailed.
The wellbeing award looks at what we need to do to improve in the following areas- an external assessor comes in to do this and focuses on the following areas:
Participation: Do we have the best systems and external partnerships in place to support different types of emotional and mental health needs?
Training for staff: Do we commit to high-quality, ongoing professional development on emotional wellbeing and mental health for all of our staff?
Staff wellbeing: Do we actively promote emotional wellbeing and mental health of our staff?
Clear strategy: Do we have a clear vision and strategy of how the school will promote and protect emotional wellbeing and mental health.
Positive Culture: Do we work with the school community to ensure that everyone has a positive culture around mental health.
They will speak to staff, students and parents to find out if they support the idea of an open culture to discuss mental health and want to make changes in s positive way
You said:
- You would like clearer information about who to contact if issues occur and would like to be able to access it easily.
We totally agree. Schools have lots of policies and procedures and we are working on making these more accessible without jargon. We hope that the parent bulletin is much easier to read and we will share resources and information using this method. We also need to produce a one page document that will help parents access support and let them know what is available. This will follow in the next parent bulletin.
You said:
- That there are some extra things we could do to make sure that everyone supports each other when they feel worried or unhappy
There were some really great ideas that we think will be really helpful. Some parents suggested a buddy system and developing effective partnerships with other older students. We have started this with some of our sixth formers and it works well so we will look to expand this. Also a lot of parents expressed concern about bullying. We take this very seriously and have commissioned a charity to work with us to complete a full audit of the issues so that we find out what the most common incidents and their causes are and help the students seek help more readily. Feedback will feature in a future bulletin. Thank you to all of the parents who gave up their time to help us with this.
Some parents said:
- That they would like greater communication and updates about their child.
Some parents feel that they would like to know more about what goes on as it is difficult to tell if things like wellbeing or bullying are issues when you are not directly involved. We agree that parents may wish to know some of our priorities so that they can look out for issues or know what to do should they experience issues. Our assemblies are planned to address these issues and we would encourage you to chat to your child as many parents who have responded to the survey feel that this is a good way to find out what is going on in school. We are hopeful that all parents are able to access the parent portal and the bulletins but if there is anything more you would like to know, particularly about wellbeing you are very welcome to get involved. Please contact Elaine Anderson using the e-mail: e.anderson@burnsidecollege.org.uk.
Might I take the time to thank all of the parents who have responded with constructive feedback that should enable us to improve our school community. The feedback we receive will be available on the school website via a future bulletin and when we have additional training, events, facilities and resources to better equip all stakeholders with better tools to ensure emotional wellbeing.
