Agenda item

Ruth Fletcher-Brown, Public Health, to introduce

The Chair introduced the item by stating that all the Members who had been involved in the project had reported back very positively and that it had been a successful and valuable piece of work.

 

Councillor Marriott reported back on her visit to Wales High School on 25th October when all six schools had showcased their work to a wider audience.  It had been a very interesting afternoon and showed the different approaches taken by the schools.  Councillor Marriott expressed her wish that the good work continue and would lead to other schools becoming involved.

 

Ruth Fletcher-Brown, Public Health presented an overview of the project to set the context.  This was followed by presentations from 3 of the participating schools – Maltby Academy (Sara Graham), Newman School – Community Special School (Sarah Kulmer) and Oakwood High School (Louise Grice). 

 

A.  Introduction and context to Whole School Approach

 

Introduction

—   What is a Whole School Approach

—   Where did it come from?

—   How did this work in Rotherham?

—   What actions did the schools take?

 

What do we know?

In an average class of 30 (15 year old) pupils:

—    3 could have a mental health disorder

—   10 are likely to have witnessed their parents separate

—   1 could have experienced the death of a parent

—   7 are likely to have been bullied

—   6 may be self-harming

 

A whole school and college approach

—   Promoting children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing: A whole school and college approach was produced by Public Health England & Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition in 2015.

—   It sets out key actions that Head Teachers and College Principals can take to embed a whole school approach to promoting emotional health and wellbeing. These actions are informed by evidence and practitioner feedback about what works.

 

8 Principles to promote mental health and wellbeing in schools and colleges

—   Leadership and management that supports and champions efforts to promote emotional health and wellbeing

—   An ethos and environment that promotes respect and values diversity

—   Curriculum, teaching and learning and to promote resilience, and support social and emotional learning

—   Enabling student voice to influence decisions

—   Staff development to support their own wellbeing and that of students

—   Identifying need and monitoring the impact of interventions

—   Working with parents and carers

—   Targeted support and appropriate referral

 

Future in Mind 2015

NHS, public health, local authorities, social care, schools and youth justice sectors working together to place the emphasis on building resilience, promoting good mental health, prevention and early intervention. (Chapter 4).

 

Encouraging schools to continue to develop whole school approaches to promoting mental health and wellbeing.

 

Why whole school approach?

‘Evidence shows that interventions taking a whole school approach to wellbeing have a positive impact in relation to both physical health and mental wellbeing outcomes, for example, body mass index (BMI), tobacco use and being bullied.’

 

What we did

—   Funding from CAMHS Local Transformation Fund for 1 school year 2016/2017.

—   6 schools piloted this work; Maltby, Newman, Oakwood, Rawmarsh, Wales and Wingfield.

—   Each school looked at the 8 principles and benchmarked themselves against these.

—   They took as a minimum 2 areas to develop into an action plan.

—   1 to1 meetings with the schools and once a term as a whole group.

—   Elected Members visited all 6 schools.

—   Councillor Cusworth was a member of the whole group meetings.

 

It was confirmed that the 6 schools were committed to continue meeting to share ideas and good practice and to drive this work forward.  Other schools were welcome to link in with them and several had already indicated their interest in doing so.  The schools were also willing to share the resources they had developed with other schools.

 

B.  Presentation from Maltby Academy

 

Objectives

—   Staff development

—   Leadership and management

—   Working with parents/carers and local communities

 

Partnership working

—   Maltby Academy

—   Maltby Learning Trust (MLT) Academies

—   Locality: Early Help/CAMHS

—   Maltby Partners: Crags Community School/Full Life Church

 

Staff Development: Pastoral Network

—   Information sharing between schools on specialist areas of knowledge (e.g. attachment)

—   Input from external providers including Virtual School and Hilltop School (sensory circuits)

—   Early transition planning for Year 5’s with mental health difficulties

—   Input and information sharing with Early Help and CAMHS

—   Access to Restorative Practice training

—   Half-termly supervision for individual pastoral staff/senior leaders

—   Foodbank Initiative for summer holidays

 

Leadership & Management: Staff training and wellbeing

—   6 staff wellbeing sessions delivered

—   New training material developed including therapeutic techniques to work creatively with children and mindfulness activities

—   Further 24 training sessions delivered ranging from 1 hour to full day; training offered at no cost to MLT schools (attended by majority of ALL staff across 5 schools)

—   Comprehensive Life Skills programme for Y7/8 reflecting mental health perspective (in PHSE)

 

As well as informing children some of the work had also upskilled staff with techniques that could also be used to manage staff’s own stress and anxiety.  The importance of work going forward arising from needs linked to new digital technology and social media was highlighted.

 

Working with parents/carers and local community

—   Parent workshops: Anxiety and Exam Stress incorporating mindfulness techniques

—   Collaboration with Rotherham Foodbank:

—   Maltby Learning Trust schools collaborated with Full Life Church (Maltby) to implement a ‘food drive’ within each school

—   Identified families received vouchers for 3 food parcels (nine days of food) over the summer holidays as a separate allocation to standard

—   Taking Maltby Academy as an example, the whole staff group took the initiative on board to contribute food items. 

—   Students with Social, Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) needs were the prime organisers, collecting food from collection points in school, keeping a tally of different food items, assisting in the delivery of food to the foodbank and in putting the food parcels together. 

—   The Foodbank initiative therefore provided the additional benefit of a valuable enrichment experience for this vulnerable cohort of students.

 

Sustainability: Moving forward

Pastoral Network:

—   Recognised by Senior Leaders as valuable network

—   Staff released half-termly to attend.

—   CCG/CAMHS and School Inclusion invited to next meeting

—   Offer of supervision continues

 

Staff training and wellbeing:

—   Transgender training delivered October 2017 to 150 primary school staff. 

—   Consultation continuing on development of Lifeskills Programme in MA across all year groups. 

—   Further consideration for Staff Wellbeing including Charter

—   Commitment reflected in Rotherham MAST role description

 

Intention to link further with Rotherham Foodbank at Full Life Church, Maltby

 

C.  Presentation from Newman School

 

Sarah highlighted the wonderful, diverse community of young people who attended the school but drew attention to increasing numbers who were experiencing anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, so it had been important to consider ways of providing support for these young people.

 

Actions

—   To review and improve staff resilience and emotional wellbeing needs in the workplace.

—   To review the impact of current emotional resilience interventions and develop the whole school SEMH offer.

—   Resilience is: “Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb but how well you bounce.”

 

Improved support for staff emotional wellbeing and resilience in the workplace - Workplace Wellbeing Charter

Need identified from analysis of whole school staff questionnaire / survey (June 2016 )

—   Met with Colin Ellis re. Workplace Wellbeing Charter. (RMBC Public Health )

—   Prioritised as part of the school Developing Excellence Plan (2016-17)

—   Attended training (ROSIS) re workplace wellbeing

—   All standards are now met at ‘Commitment Level’

—   Staff will readily approach HR Lead and Lead SEMH teacher for support advice re workplace wellbeing.

—   Newman School will achieve the Charter at Commitment level (December 2017) and will continue to measure and action approaches to support workplace wellbeing (Annual questionnaire – Governors)

 

Impact

—   Walking and running group established – all welcome.

—   Whole School social events – all welcome.

—   Wow board (Corridor display) – celebrating the achievements and contributions of all staff.

—   Publications/posters and advice available to staff – dedicated staff room board and dedicated e folder on the Staff Drive.

—   Healthy eating week – staff involved in whole school approach and ethos. 

—   Staff signposted to RMBC counselling and counselling available in school if required.

—   Staff choir (with Nordorff Robbins Music Therapist)

 

Supporting pupil mental health

January 2016

—   For children and young people, the prevalence rate of mental health problems is 36% in children and adolescents with learning disabilities. (Source: Mental Health Foundation )

—   There were 41 (approximately one-third) pupils throughout school who had been identified through our SEMH referral system as having mental health concerns: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, conduct disorders and self-harm / suicidal thoughts.

—   Action 2: To review the impact of current emotional resilience interventions and develop the whole school SEMH offer.

 

Impact if not addressed

—   Pupils lack motivation and commitment to learning

—   Pupils have low self-esteem and self confidence

—   Absenteeism

—   Disruption

—   Challenging/withdrawn behaviours

—   Limited or no progress

—   Exclusion

—   Negative life chances and opportunities

—   Leads to more severe and long term mental illness

—   Communication break-down

—   Staff have increased stress

—   Unable to teach effectively

—   Sickness and absence increases

—   Recruitment and retention issues

 

Newman School SEMH referral pathway November 2016

Universal services available to all pupils

Targeted mental health support services and CAMHS – range of activities

Graduated response

 

Actions to review the impact of current emotional resilience interventions and develop the whole school SEMH offer.

—   Research with York University (Dr. Poppy Nash – School of Psychology).

—   Developed an Emotional Resilience Intervention (ReNew).

—   The Research project had academic integrity and was successful in developing emotional resilience in participants.

—   Counsellor appointed for one year initially (one day per week).

—   Attachment Lead training (2 staff).

 

SEMH case study 2016 featuring

-       Background

-       Starting point for pupil

-       Actions by school

-       Positive outcomes for pupil

 

Impact

—   Teaching and Associate staff have received training on Attachment, developing resilience (York University), training from MAST (supporting mental health).

—   All pupils have equable access to SEMH support (using a graduated approach) – as defined in Newman’s SEMH referral pathway.

—   Fully trained counsellor appointed and fully utilised, positive impact on pupil mental health.

—   Whole school SEMH policy.

 

Sustainability

—   Middle Leader and Senior Leader to become Specialist Leaders in Education (SEMH focus) – aim was for the SLE to support leaders in other RMBC schools to develop a whole school approach to SEMH.  The actions undertaken through the project had facilitated lead staff to gain confidence and professional knowledge of the impact of current emotional resilience interventions and the development of the whole school SEMH offer as an approach to promoting positive mental health.

—   Continuation of Attachment Lead work – further training to whole staff and embedding practice to promote attachment friendly practice through school.  Action research project.

—   Counsellor appointed for 1 more year (considering training own staff in counselling skills).

—   Further development and use of a whole school graduated response to SEMH – improvement of analysis of attendance and behaviour data.

 

D.  Presentation from Oakwood High School

 

Focus

—   Audit of need:

—   Staff development to support their own wellbeing and that of students

—   Identifying need and monitoring impact of interventions

—   Targeted support and appropriate referral

 

Initial steps

—   Use of outside partners – Educational Psychology Service (EPS)

—   EPS training delivered to whole staff – raising awareness of mental health, wellbeing and resilience

—   Developing a system to RAG pupils – Extensive research/Tools to support

 

Why we developed a screening tool

—   To gain a “snapshot” of pupil wellbeing

—   To find a way of gathering pupil voice regarding their wellbeing

—   To highlight pupils who may be “under the radar” and need support

—   To be able to plan and deliver effective interventions that address pupils’ needs

—   To be able to look at trends and patterns across year groups

 

Why we used Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)

—   Extensive research into wellbeing tools; many used qualitative methods and would take a long time to analyse

—   SDQ was a recognised tool, used by CAMHS, Health etc.

—   Using Survey Monkey, SDQ could be completed on pupils’ ipads

—   Numerical responses could be analysed using Microsoft Excel

—   Tested the SDQ on staff

—   Rolled out to Y9 via email – prepped Personal Learning Tutors (PLTs)

—   Analysis of SDQ and identification

—   Allocated staff to pupils and interventions based on the 4 areas of need

—   Devised entry and exit questionnaires (monitor impact)

—   Resources sourced and distributed

—   Interventions began at tutor time

 

Impact

—  Interventions ran

—  Learning curve – skill set? Confidence?

—  Sustainability?

—  Drop-in tutor session

—  Identified a group of pupils – pro social – pupil voice

 

Louise confirmed she had a good knowledge of the strengths of the staff team and could generally identify who was best to provide support to a pupil in specific circumstances.  However in this case the interventions ran with staff members available at the time and it became apparent that there were variations in staff confidence/skills regarding talking about emotions, conduct etc.

 

Staff Wellbeing

—   Input from EPS on staff wellbeing

—   Identified a core group

—   Established a working party

—   Small changes that had a big impact

—   To look at the workplace charter

—   Created an action plan – Promoting Staff Wellbeing January 2017

-        Communicating a sense of value

-        Creating a positive working environment

-        Promoting healthy work habits and self-beliefs

-        Making workloads manageable

-        Promoting a work-life balance

-        Supporting the mental health of staff

 

And then

 

—   EHWB week – 24^th April 2017

—   Assembly, tutor activity, SDQ to all year groups

—   To allow a snap shot – 77% Green, 14% amber and 9% red from whole school response (587/1000)

—   Analysed the main themes

-        Emotional

-        Talk to …?

-        Hyperactivity

-        Conduct

-        Peer problems

-        Pro social – ok with school and coping with the associated pressures

 

The overall results were reassuring including for students having someone to talk to within school.  In addition, the comments box in the SDQ also led to staff picking up pupils who had made comments and discussing these further.  It was also reassuring to know that staff were aware already of nearly all students who had identified as red and there were follow up conversations with the others.

 

Now what?

—  Process of creating whole school strategies for each red group – handbook

—  Tutor based activities to back up and support

—  Pupil voice work with pro-social group to highlight issues to feed into strategies

—  Y7 to complete the SDQ

—  Audit of staff – snap shot of their EHWB

 

Sustainability

—  EHWB week every year to coincide with World Mental Health Day

—  #HelloYellow

—  Identification of key pupils who want to be ambassadors

—  Drop-in Tutor time session – direct pupils there

—  Small things that make a big difference – use of hash tags

—  Work spaces

—  Subliminal messages

—  Making staff aware of where they can access support

 

The schools were thanked for their enthusiastic, comprehensive and professional reports that highlighted the benefits of the whole school approach.

 

Following the presentations the following questions and issues were raised:

 

·           In the presentation from Maltby, work with Year 5 pupils was mentioned.  In the future would primary schools be included to a greater extent as mental health problems did not just start in year 5?  Or, in the future, would a set of primary schools be asked to take up this approach as it seemed a worthwhile ambition from what has been said regarding the benefits to pupils?

 

       Maltby included their primaries; Wales also had all their primary feeder schools involved and did something similar to Oakwood in terms of RAG rating pupils but by staff rather than pupils themselves.  They worked very closely with the primaries to get them to undertake that work so they could start supporting those young people before they moved to secondary school.

 

       The funding was limited and schools were encouraged to work with other schools, including primaries, and to reach out further.  Partners were also looking at local CAMHS Transformation funding for year 5 and 6 to do some work around emotional resilience.  However, this was at a very early stage of putting together a business plan of what that might look like.  It was recognised that there was a need to address children’s mental health early on and get that right.

Several primaries attended the presentation event at Wales and many recognised there were things they could learn and take forward at very low cost.  The pilot schools had been very willing to share their expertise including sharing toolkits and helping others to learn from their experiences.  The 6 schools were continuing to meet and had opened up their meetings to other schools, with several taking up that offer to join, which would provide a platform to support this work going forward.

 

·           It was incredible what had been achieved, but bearing in mind your roles and being ambassadors for a whole school approach, what was the 1 thing that worked particularly well and the ` that you would not do again?

 

       Oakwood – Not making assumptions about the staff’s skill set; even though they were keen they did worry about making situations worse for the young people by saying the wrong thing or advising them incorrectly.  If it was to be repeated, attempts would be made to run those interventions as part of the learning from that experience.  It also needed to be remembered that it was a whole school approach and not at an individual pupil level, so it was about tweaking things such as how to talk about mental health in a more positive way.

 

       Maltby – The buying into training and the upskilling element had worked really well.  It was also about not under or overestimating where staff were generally in terms of their understanding of mental health.  The staff had been fabulous at taking on new concepts but sometimes it could be at too fast a pace so, although it would still be great to introduce concepts of transactional analysis and different models in the therapeutic world, it needed to be at a slower pace going forward.

 

·           When the young people were approached was it with their parents’ consent or, if not, do you try and get the parents involved?

 

       Oakwood - we would definitely always try and involve the parents if it was appropriate to do so and dependent upon the age of the young person.  This was mainly for issues of consent as some services required parental consent e.g. as access to CAMHS or learning mentoring within schools.  If a young person was reluctant to talk to their parents or for the school to talk to their parents, for whatever reason, and there was assurance that there were no Safeguarding issues, the School would direct them to outside agency support they could self-refer to.

 

       It was very much the same at Newman School with heavy reliance on the support of the families.  From the outset it was about engaging with the families and making sure they were aware that the School were aware and it was a joint process.  Written permission would always be secured from families and from the student if they were able to do so for themselves just to make sure that everybody was aware exactly what was happening.

 

·           What did the audit at Oakwood say about the overall picture of staff mental health?  How valuable was an appreciation of staff mental health in the teaching profession?

 

       The audit had not quite been completed yet but it had been presented to the whole school to raise awareness that it would be looking at staff wellbeing.  The working party that had been set up was representative of the different areas of the staff body.  The Head Teacher did not want to know all the questions in the survey but rather what things he could do to help improve staff’s emotional health and wellbeing.  The School had moved into a new, smaller building last year with a smaller staffroom that no longer accommodated the full staff team, which had possibly impacted on morale as staff were not as connected.  Previously the talk used to be, “this is the Oakwood way and this is what we do”.  Hopefully the audit would be out by Christmas and then there would be data available. 

 

·           From the work across all the schools, did exam and attainment pressure factor in as a pattern in any of the work that was carried out with the students about their mental health?  Or for teachers?

 

       At Oakwood the first survey had been in April so Year 11 students had had significant exams coming up.  There had been a low response from the year group as they had been too busy doing other things and students had opted out of assemblies to revise.  It had also led to reflection about what was happening for teachers as well in terms of work-life balance.

 

·           Reflecting on teachers’ health and wellbeing, who looked at the Council staff Pulse survey regarding the mental health and wellbeing agenda and had input into the survey?  To follow up.

 

·           Were there issues In the 3 schools with bullying?  Was there an anti-bullying programme in place?

 

       Oakwood - With 1,100 pupils in School they did not always interact in the right way all the time but the School had a zero tolerance policy regarding bullying.  No statistics were to hand regarding bullying based on a pupil having mental health issues but there was not a feeling that this was happening.  Louise worked in the team that picked up instances of bullying and carried out work around mediation.  Neither had there been significant instances of homophobic bullying; much of what happened in the schools was around pupils establishing their “pecking order”.

 

       Newman School had an anti-bullying policy but were fortunate that, due to the nurturing nature of the School, they did not tend to have many instances of bullying.  What was becoming increasingly challenging was that, as some of the more cognitively able pupils became aware of how they were perceived by other people, they were having significant mental health challenges e.g. low self-esteem with a pupil who was a wheelchair user unwilling to leave their bedroom.  It was becoming more of an issue outside the school with the public than in school.

 

       Maltby was a similarly sized school to Oakwood with a diverse population; pockets of affluence as well as 1 of the most deprived areas in England, which created problems of its own.  A weekly internal meeting of the vulnerable learners’ network was an opportunity to discuss any young person with an emerging issue.  A craft club for years 7-9 had recently been set up, overseen by a Year 11, to build their confidence.  The School would never say they had this totally cracked but tried to keep on top of any bullying with new initiatives and revisiting old ones.  The national Anti-Bullying Week commenced the week beginning 13^th November.

 

Paula Williams, Head of Inclusion in CYPS then provided the Commission with an overview of the work that had been taking place over the last 2 years and set the Whole School Approach Project within its wider context.

 

The Educational Psychology Service (EPS) was part of the Inclusion Team and had a lot of input and involvement in the work done.  They were already working in quite close partnerships around some of these issues.

 

When the new Head of Inclusion post was created 2 years ago, the immediate focus was to try to address the subject of exclusions in schools.  The first task had been to start to look at the Social Emotional and Mental Health (SEMH) agenda.  Secondary school Head Teachers came together to work in partnership looking at what could be put in place as whole schools prior to children needing Education Health and Care (EHC) Plans for SEMH and prior to children being permanently excluded from schools.  The approach taken was quite similar to what Ruth was starting to look at in Whole School approaches.

 

Work was initially with secondary colleagues, but had now moved into primaries.  The schools now worked together in partnerships to look at what they could put in place and how they could improve their collective response to children who had SEMH needs.  2 years ago schools had felt they had very little option but to permanent exclude if they felt a child in school was challenging.

 

At the same time as working with the schools Paula also started working with the Pupil Referral Units (PRUs).  The PRUs had stated that many of the young people permanently excluded from school were young people who needed some therapeutic input, or their needs were more around mental health type difficulties, similar to the list that Newman gave in their presentation.

 

Now partnership work was really starting to come together.  Also, at the same time as these two pieces of work, CAMHS were transforming their Service and starting to work on how they could move into localities to see young people and families.  Early Help were also starting that work.

 

All the individual pieces of work were being brought together.  There was a joint commissioning strategy where health, education and social care were all represented alongside parents and within that strategy there had been oversight of some of the work. 

 

SEMH needs were going to be reviewed to inform a joint strategy that would cover EHC, with work commencing after half term with a view to having something ready in February 2018.  Partners would like to involve young people and private providers in order to have a robust piece of work over the next 3 to 5 years.

 

In June 2017, a 2 day conference had taken place that was initially badged under SEND, but the primary focus was SEMH needs.  Over 90 schools had been represented, both primary and secondary, with leaders from those settings looking at whole school approaches.  There would always be some schools who were leading the way and others who were just learning, but it was very high on the agenda within education and there was quite a high buy-in.

 

Moving forward there were different ways in which to keep spreading this:

 

-        Yearly conference on Special Educational Needs and Inclusion in spring, with the next still needing to be on SEMH.

-        Events like the 1 at Wales as there was a real mix of colleagues, not just secondary but also primary.

-        Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCOs) networks – local as in the 1 mentioned at Maltby but also Rotherham-wide where this could be addressed together as a Rotherham community.

-        The whole school network group of the pilot schools were keen to continue to come together and that group also needed to feed in to the strategy.

-        2 years ago a lot of people were just starting this journey and where we are now was in a much stronger position across Rotherham bringing work together and having 1 strategy that looked at SEMH across education, health and social care.  The relocation of all SEN and Inclusion Services at Kimberworth Place with CAMHS was nearly complete and would assist in bringing people together.  People were feeling positive about coming together and making a difference.

 

Members asked the following questions:

 

-        Concern regarding the schools not in the pilot with some being at different stages of the journey.  Were all the schools on board with this?

 

Although only 6 secondary schools were in the pilot, secondary schools were all aware of it as an issue and were working as part of the partnership.  There were close to 100 primary schools and there was a strategic group for primaries around SEMH with areas represented.  Some primaries did not feel that they had experienced the same high levels of need for SEMH as others and, until they were in the position where they felt they needed help, they did not see that it was a primary concern.  Sometimes this was because of the Early Years settings and primaries were doing a good job already around SEMH needs and working with children to keep them in school.  There was still work to do with primaries and would be the focus this year after spending 2 years working more with secondaries, as some primaries had reported increased need and were asking for help.  The partnership model and work with PRUs were being looked at to extend the age range in primaries and looking at the kind of service needed for primaries as the model would be different.

 

-        As a Councillor in Wickersley I am seeking assurances in particular about all secondaries and if they were in the right place?

 

Wickersley had established a partnership in their Academy chain, so Wickersley, Rawmarsh and Clifton worked very closely together and supported the children within their Trust.  What they looked to do was to see what else they could offer before they felt that permanent exclusion was the next option.  They had done a lot of work as there were concerns about the high number of exclusions from 1 school in the Trust last year but interestingly the number in that School had reduced this year and they were working much more together and finding solutions within their Trust, in addition to working with external support services.

-         

-        The partnership that Oakwood and Maltby sit within were just pulling together their leaders to re-evaluate where they were at and it had been suggested to do the same in the other partnership that carried many of the central schools as part of the evaluation for moving forward with the strategy.

 

Resolved:-

 

(1) That the good work undertaken by the schools in the pilot be recognised, and their plans to maintain their progress.

 

(2) That consideration be given as to how all Elected Members who were School Governors, in primary and secondary schools, could help to support Social, Emotional and Mental Health as a priority in their schools.

 

(3) That the Health Select Commission receive a further progress monitoring report on the Social, Emotional and Mental Health Strategy in 2018 as it developed.