Mental Health and Wellbeing

Supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our pupils is the responsibility of all staff at Farifield. The Pastoral Faculty take the lead across school for supporting our most vulnerable pupils. We have recently expanded the size of our pastoral team and now have four learning mentors, a Medical Needs and Well-being Officer as well as a Pastoral Manager, Assistant Pastoral Manager and a Pastoral Administrator. Leading the Pastoral Faculty is our Senior Assistant Headteacher (Designated Safeguarding Lead and Senior Mental Health Lead), Dr Beckett. Every day at Fairfield our experienced pastoral team offers support and guidance to our pupils. We are able to focus our expertise on specifically supporting the mental health needs of girls. Our Student Support Faculty, lead by Mrs Stewart (SENCO), take the lead in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of our pupils with SEND, providing support in and out of lessons for pupils. We are able to provide pupils a safe space in our Inclusion room, the Pastoral Hub and in the Student Support Faculty. Form Tutors have a vital role to play in supporting pupils as they see their tutees twice a day and will be the first point of contact for pupils and parents/carers.. If you have any concerns about the mental health of your child please contact their form tutor.

Mental Health and Wellbeing CPD

All staff receive CPD on pastoral, safeguarding and mental health issues. As well this programme of whole-staff CPD we have a rolling programme of sending staff from our Pastoral and Student Support teams on the St.John’s Ambulance ‘Youth Mental Health First Aid’ course as well as providing Workplace Mental Health CPD to a large group of staff. Staff regularly attend other training opportunities as required for their role. All Fairfield staff have access to online training on how to support the mental health and wellbeing of young people. A number of Life Skills teachers have also received training in how to teach Mindfulness and this is delivered to pupils within the Life Skills curriculum.

Support and Guidance

The Fairfield Wellbeing Guide provides advice and support about mental health and wellbeing.

Young Minds

Young Minds has a selection of articles on their website focusing on mental health for young people.

Mind

Mind provides advice and support to anyone experiencing a mental health problem. Here is a link for different ways to contact Mind for further advice and support.

Childline

Counsellors are available for children to contact through Childline either online or by telephone. The phone number is 0800 1111 and is available from 9am to midnight. Further help and guidance can be found here about how to contact Childline.

Kooth

Kooth is an online counselling and emotional well-being service which is free and available for all young people in Tameside. To access it you just need a smart phone, tablet or computer.  If you are interested in accessing this service please see the attachments below.