Mental Health and Wellbeing

All of us at St Joseph’s are totally committed to supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our school community: each and every pupil, all of our parents or carers; as well as all of our staff. We recognise how important mental health and emotional wellbeing is to all of our lives in the same way as our physical health is.

We also recognise that mental health and wellbeing has arguably the biggest impact on children’s learning and achievement, as well as their quality of life in general.

Everybody experiences challenges throughout their life that can make them more vulnerable at times, and we will always try to support our community during those times. During the current global health crisis, this has never been more true.

We have put together some useful websites and resources for you to access online should you need to. It isn’t always easy to take the first step to help yourself, not everyone wants to talk openly about their issues. If that is the case, then use the links at the bottom of this page, or those under the "Mental Health and Wellbeing" tab on the homepage to visit specific pages that can be a good place to start. Remember, that as part of our school family we care for each and every one of you; if we can help, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with a member of staff.

What we can offer

At our school we:

  • Work with children to help them to understand their emotions and feelings better through techniques like emotional coaching and our PSHE scheme
  • Encourage children to be open, honest and confident in talking about their emotions and we link this to our behaviour management where appropriate
  • Help children to create and maintain positive relationships with friends, family and staff
  • Promote self-esteem and ensure children know that they are all important to us all
  • Encourage children to see their own strengths and talents, and recognise those of others; we take lots of opportunities to publicly and privately praise the children as well as the adults around the school.
  • Help children to develop emotional and academic resilience through plentiful opportunities to try difficult tasks.

We do this in a range of ways:
  • Whole-school Support - To meet the needs of all our pupils through our overall ethos and our wider curriculum. Just some examples of this include:
  • We encourage a positive, growth mindset approach to learning; it is never, “I can’t do this.” It is instead, “I can’t do this yet!”
  • Our PSHE curriculum teaches about healthy relationships

Additional support- For those who may have short-term needs and those who may have been made more vulnerable by life experiences.

  • Access to the ADHD foundation
  • Access to CAMHS (the child and adult mental health service)
  • Access to Wirral’s MHST team