At Portway Primary School, our commitment to keeping our children safe, and providing the best possible environment in which every child is cared for and able to learn and grow, underpins all of our teaching and learning. 

The document below  presents the Wellbeing and mental health offer we have available across our school community. Each line delivers a progressive offer of support. The zones reference the level and the provider of support.

Zone 1: Universal – Self-help strategies or school-led support which is available to all.

This zone also includes our wellness curriculum offer:

Zone 2: Targeted – School-led or externally-led support offered within school for targeted individuals.

Zone 3: Specialist – Specific support offered by school but managed by an external provider.

In June 2020, through our membership of the Wellbeing for Schools Award programme, developed in partnership with the National Children’s Bureau, we achieved external recognition of  our approach at school, in which the wellbeing of children and staff is the first consideration in everything we do.  The award recognises all the work described above that we have done to date, and also considers staff and family wellbeing, which is a key focus of our School Leadership Team.  The award aims to ‘promote positive social and emotional wellbeing, mental health and wellness for pupils and staff in your school’.  

Through our achievement of this award, we have:

  • Demonstrated our commitment to promoting mental health as part of school life;
  • Worked to continually improve the emotional wellbeing of our children, their families and our staff;
  • Ensured that all mental health problems/concerns are identified early and appropriate support is put in place;
  • Continually reviewed and refined our provision of interventions so that they best serve the needs of our children, their families and our staff;
  • Built on the work that we have already done to engage the whole school community in the importance of mental health issues, using appropriate technologies to make this an easy process for children to engage with;
  • Continued to seek, capture and analyse the views of children, families and staff around mental health issues, which we continually use to review our current performance and inform our planning.

 

To further support our offer, we: 

  • Work with Whole Child Therapy through which we make a range of therapies available to our children and their families to support their wellbeing.
  • Work with Place2Be, a leading children’s mental health charity, which has an office at school.  Children are able both to self-refer, and be referred by teachers.
  • Work with Wellbeing in Newham Schools (WINS), supported by our allocated Education Mental Health Practitioner. Children and families can access a variety of mental health and wellbeing support options. 
  • Work with Newham’s School Health team, which provides a number of emotional and physical well-being services to our children and their families.
  • Work with Newham’s SEND 0-25 service, which provides a variety of programmes for children with more complex learning and health needs, including those with disabilities.
  • Work with our Gardener in Residence, Cassie Liversidge, whose work with the children in the school garden is structured to ensure that it is fully integrated with the classroom-based curriculum, giving the children real world experiences with gardening and plants.
  • Work with PE specialists to ensure that our games and activities curriculum is challenging and engaging for all children, encouraging children to use their bodies, and to experience the thrill of competing.Â