Trauma Informed Schools

Brightside Nursery Infant School is proud to be a Trauma Informed School!

Every child has the right to feel safe, for their voice to be heard and to be treated with kindness and care. This is something we pride ourselves of at Brightside.

When a child feels psychologically safe and has good emotional regulation they will thrive, develop and grow in all aspects of their life. Our staff help, support and guide children to be and feel emotionally regulated so that they are able to access their learning which will improve their educational outcomes.

What is a Trauma Informed School?

A trauma informed school is one that is able to support children who suffer with trauma or mental health problems and whose troubled behaviour acts as a barrier to learning. Brightside Nursery Infant School is a trauma informed school which provides all children with the skills to develop relationships, heal minds, brains and bodies. We also support key conversational skills in addressing and making sense of what has happened which is central to our work and is a major shift in whole school/organisation/community culture. 

Why do we need Trauma Informed schools? 

Rising numbers of children are presenting with mental health difficulties in schools and current teaching environments are struggling to keep up. Many children have a high ACE score (meaning multiple adverse childhood experiences) known to 'leave children at risk of mental and physical ill-health later in life and even early death' (The ACE study Felitti and Anda, a study involving over 17,000 people). With the cuts in CAMHS and with over 1 million children in the UK with a mental health problem, schools are often left with a major responsibility. Children spend 190 days a year at school so we believe that schools are very well placed to pick up the baton and help these children.

Trauma Informed Schools UK offer training to schools to empower and enable key staff to be able to respond effectively to mild to moderate mental health problems. 

What do we do at Brightside to support mental health and wellbeing?

Mrs Jenkins-Omar is our qualified Trauma Informed Practitioner, Senior Mental Health lead and the schools Designated Safeguarding Lead.

Sally Harksby is our schools Education Mental Health Practitioner who is in school every Thursday afternoon supporting children in emotion groups, supporting parents/carers with parent led CBT and giving expert advice to our staff team on how we can develop our wellbeing offer to ensure everyone thrives.

Here are the Trauma Informed strategies we use in school

*We implement strategies using P and the R's- Protect, Relate, Regulate and Reflect. 

*We have a nurturing approach and an open door policy so all children and families feel they are able to speak to staff if they need support

*We do a variety of interventions with children such as sand play, the use of emotion cards and big empathy drawings to help children relate and reflect on their emotions

*Our staff Meet and Greet children and their families every day which promotes psychological safety

*All staff at Brightside, from teaching staff to lunchtime supervisors, implement trauma informed strategies to best support children 

*There is a calm area in each classroom and a sensory room to support children to regulate 

*Each class has their own Affirmation jar with positive quotes and messages for the children to say and read. They are encouraged to say these individually and together as a class.

*In PHSE & RSE sessions pupils fill in 'I wish my teacher knew' notes for teachers to read

*PACE (playfulness, acceptance and curiosity) is promoted 

*WINE statements (wonder, imagine, notice and empathy) are used with children to help "catch and match" emotions for regulation and reflection

*All staff are 'Emotionally Available Adults' to each other as well as all children and their families

*All staff use affect attunement and give acknowledgment to all children and families

We also have termly meetings with CAMHs education practitioners who help to support school with promoting 'Healthy Minds'. We have staff trained on 'Heathy Minds' including  a Senior Mental Health lead, who works with our 'Healthy Mind Champions' in school to become more self aware as well as peer mentors within school.

If you would like anymore information or advice regarding mental health or wellbeing, please speak to Mrs Jenkins-Omar who is happy to support in anyway.