Pastoral Team

                                                                    Mrs Forshaw                                                                                Miss Bassindale                                                                                  Mrs Savage

                                                                   Pastoral Leader                                                                                 SEMH Practitioner                                                                     SEMH Practitioner incl attendance

The Pastoral Team in school work with children and their families to try and overcome any barriers to learning. This could be as a result of  the needs of the children specifically, or the family as a whole. 

This could be:

• Attendance difficulties
• Behavioural difficulties
• Mental health support
• Financial support
• Early Help strategies
• Parenting support
• Signposting to other agencies 
• Emotional support (nurture and ELSA)

This list is not exhaustive. If you have any concerns please contact us and we will always try to find a way to help.

Multi Agency Working

We can speak to other agencies and ask for advice or we can refer the family to the agencies to work together. We are the first point of contact for all agencies who may work with school.

With Me In Mind is a mental health support service which works with School, the young people and their parents. With parental consent, we can consult with them about concerns or  discuss neurodevelopmental difficulties such as Autism and ADHD and request strategies to support children. They will also offer support to parents and children around low level mental health concerns such as separation anxiety. We have worked together to present workshops for parents and this will continue to develop in the coming years. If you feel that you would benefit from their support please contact the school. If staff in school identified a level of difficulty for your child, we would speak with you about whether you would appreciate their support and a referral would be made.

They can also offer support groups for children in school and also workshops for parents on things such as:

• Anxiety in children
• Sleep support 
• Building resilience
• Supporting school stress
• Transition

Amongst others. 

Nurture

Here at Herringthorpe we are very aware that mental health can be up and down from day to day depending on what is happening in our lives. We all manage most of our stress and worries  but there are times when we might need a little help to see us through a particularly bad time. 

All our staff are trained to spot the signs of poor mental health and support our children to express how they are feeling. As part of our daily routine children scale how they are feeling from 1-5 at registration in both the morning and afternoon, 1 being not so good and 5 being very happy. If children score themselves low then a member of staff will have a conversation with them so that we can be aware of any issues and arrange support before the children’s daily routine is affected. This gives us great insight into the type of things that children worry about. Based on this or at the request of parents we may offer a place in a nurture group to support a child’s emotional needs or a 1:1 session may be needed. Sometimes it is just about having someone to talk to.

We also offer specific emotional support based on the ELSA programme. This is usually a 1:1 intervention over 6-12 weeks. It supports the children to recognise their emotions and gives strategies for them to manage them safely and effectively. Parents can discuss this with their child’s class teacher or a member of the Pastoral Team.

As well as the nurture groups we also offer a more specific counselling service with Rotherham Young Minds. Parents can request this service for their child or a need may be identified by a member of staff. In this case a discussion will be had with parents. A referral form is completed and parents are asked to give consent. Counselling sessions are usually over a minimum 6 week block but can be extended if it is felt necessary. These sessions are confidential unless the child shares something that the worker feels is a safeguarding concern in which case school would respond as per our safeguarding procedures.  

We work with South Yorkshire Police to build positive relationships between young people and the Police. Our local community Officer comes into school and delivers assemblies to all children about keeping safe. We cover bonfire night each year but he will also come in if we are aware of a particular issue for our young people. We will also ask him to support individual children if they are making poor choices to enable them to be forward thinking and make the changes that need to happen.

School Nursing

If you are concerned about any aspect of your child’s health we can make a referral to the School Nursing Service and request support.

When families are finding things difficult we can complete an early help assessment. This helps us to identify what’s working well, what’s not going so well and what we can do to improve things. Depending on what work needs to be done it may be that school offers the support needed or it could be that we request an early help worker to offer support in the home.   This will always involve working together for the best outcomes.

Safeguarding

All staff in school work to safeguard our children but this is more so in the pastoral team. We represent school at meetings with other services and will be the ones to contact parents/agencies if we have any concerns or information to share. This is an important part of our job and our intention is to always be open with parents/carers but we have a duty to safeguard our children and parents may find this difficult to understand at times but please be assured that we will support all our families.