Children’s Mental Health

At Pawlett we feel we have an important role to play in helping children develop their emotional well-being and a growth mind-set. We promote positive mental health as we believe this will improve a range of outcomes for children including attitudes to learning and better attendance. This is supported by our ethos “Learning together, Growing together” and our school values: Curiosity, Respect, Happiness, Perseverance, Creativity, and Hope.

We are a member of the Mental Health Support Team (Schools), a collaborative service delivered by Young Somerset and Somerset Foundation Trust. This service is for children and young people aged 5-16, providing low intensity CBT interventions and support to schools to adopt a Whole Schools Approach to mental health and wellbeing.

Educational Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs) offer short-term support to children and young people who are experiencing difficulties with things like anxiety, worries and low mood. EMHPS can help children, young people and their parents/carers to learn new skills to make changes and help themselves to feel better. Practitioners also offer support to parents/carers of primary age children up to age 12, through parenting and parent led Low Intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (LICBT) is suitable for mild to moderate mental health needs and is different to counselling. It requires a degree of motivation and involves children/young people practicing skills outside of the sessions.

Educational mental health practitioners will carry out an initial assessment prior to treatment to see if low intensity CBT is the right support. If it is offered, interventions are weekly over 6-8 weeks.

The service is accessible via a request for help through our Designated Mental Health Lead, Sally Jeffries.

Children’s Mental Health Resources

Below are some websites and resources that you may find useful:

Empowering children and young people to find the right wellbeing support at the right time, Somerset Big Tent is a partnership of Charities, Charitable Incorporated Organisations and Community Interest Companies. These are VCSE* organisations that provide a range of services including positive activities, therapeutic services and specialist support to increase positive wellbeing and improve mental health within children and young people aged 5-25 in Somerset.

All services on the Somerset Big Tent website have gone through a quality and safety assurance process*, this means that Somerset Big Tent has met with each organisation and are satisfied with the key documents and information that they have provided us with.