Mental Health and Wellbeing Team
The mental health and wellbeing of everyone connected to our schools is of great importance to us at Ferndale. We have a dedicated Mental Health and Wellbeing team made up of Beccy Nolan (Head of School), Torz David (Lighthouse Inclusion Worker), Fay Billingham (growth mindset lead) and Grace Evans (PSHE lead). Torz qualified as a Senior Mental Health Lead last year and has been working with the other members of the wellbeing team to ensure that we are supporting all stakeholders in the school as best we can. We do things such as complete surveys with staff, teachers and pupils to identify areas for improvement, offer a fortnightly drop in session for parents (speak to a member of staff for more information on this) and ensure a very clear ethos of promoting and prioritising the mental health of all pupils, families and staff. This is always developing and changing and we are always very open to hearing new ideas.
What is Mental Health?
Just like physical health everyone has a scale on which their mental health sits, this often moves around and sometimes our mental health is good and other times it slips down and is lower on the scale. There are lots of reasons this may happen such as stress, bereavement or illness and sometimes it declines and we don’t know why. When we feel our mental health, or that of our children, is declining it is really important to seek advice and help just as you would if you were physically poorly. We have included some helpful links on this page that may be a good starting point.
Anxiety
Anxiety is something that everyone feels at some points and is something that lots of people get more often than is ‘normal’ but it feels different for everyone. Anxiety is a normal response to something dangerous or stressful but it can become a problem when it shows up at unexpected times or takes hold and stops us from living our day to day as normal. If you are worried about the amount of anxiety your child is feeling you may find some of these links useful.
Seeking Help
We run an open door policy at our school and would welcome in any parents or carers to share concerns or worries related to family mental health. Your GP is a good starting point also for seeking further support than is listed below. Please see our Pupil Wellbeing Policy (needs to be ratified) for the different tiers of support available within school.