Sharing Good Practice: Primary SEMH

Many thanks to St Nicholas C of E Primary School, Alcester, and Westgate Primary School who share with us some features of their provision for pupils with SEMH needs:

St Nicholas C of E Primary School, Alcester

Current media focus has highlighted the importance of children accessing quality SEMH support quickly.

Many schools have, like St Nicholas C of E Primary School, experienced a rapid increase in the number of children requiring SEMH support. Providing this support when faced with current budgetary constraints is an area of challenge for us all.

Identifying children for early support is the key to successful outcomes for SEMH provision. This can be the difference between children accessing ‘early help’ or requiring intensive specialist mental health support later in education.

Empowering children to talk about their feelings and concerns, as well as ensuring that they understand they can ask for help, from family, staff and peers, has played a huge part in forming our current provision.

Our ‘open door’ policy enables parents to discuss concerns and allows staff to foster excellent relationships with parents who feel valued and listened to. One parent recently commented: “I feel so reassured that staff are not only great teachers but they genuinely care about the happiness of our children.”

Alongside this, all staff are vigilant ensuring that they highlight children causing concern by following clear processes. This approach is inextricably linked to our approach to safeguarding and helps senior leaders build the bigger picture.

Upon identification, children are included within our additional needs register, which ensures staff have an excellent knowledge of the range of need within their class, the support that children are receiving and the progress that they are making towards SMART targets.

A wide range of SEMH provision is accessed by our children in small groups and 1:1 sessions. These include; a nurturing focused breakfast club, forest school, drama, creative activities, LEGO therapy, yoga, mindfulness, resilience and growth mind-set sessions, and social skills.

In some cases, in order to fully support the child it is necessary to support the family through; arranging EHSAs, implementing pastoral action plans or behaviour action plans, arranging sessions with the Listening Service (counselling service) and/or involving the Parenting Project.

Through continued, regular evaluation of provision and its impact, each child’s need is assessed and their support tailored towards their next steps with the long term goal of continued progress academically and socially through outstanding universal provision.

Successful SEMH support hinges on many factors and takes time and care to embed. However, it is a key part of creating a community that is supportive, caring, tolerant and compassionate.

Laura Marshall

Inclusion Leader

St Nicholas C of E Primary School, Alcester 

Westgate Primary School

At Westgate, we often have children who exhibit significantly challenging behaviours. It can be tempting to look outside the school for the answer but, over the years, we have come to realise that we have many of the answers in school and that we really can bring about meaningful change. Here are some of the strategies we use to minimise disruption for the rest of the class, to support the teaching staff, and to help avoid permanent exclusion for the child.

For individual pupils requiring support in difficult times, our SENDCo will contact parents to discuss the issues and tie them in to a weekly update, thereby encouraging shared working. We may also ask the class TA to take on a mentoring role – daily time to talk, set up counselling from TAs trained in counselling/ listening skills or put in nurturing activities on a one-to-one basis.

For children at risk of permanent exclusion, or those returning from exclusion, we make a tight Behaviour/ Pastoral Support/ Reintegration Plan involving outside agencies and parents in its regular review. This could include paring down contact time in school, beginning with one hour a day, and gradually building up time in relation to successful engagement. We use a Boxhall Profile, which is very helpful in identifying areas for targeted interventions to support need, regardless of whether or not children access our Nurture Group. We constantly adjust and refine our approach to supporting pupils with high level behavioural needs, changing provision regularly to promote a successful outcome.

Like most schools, we find Early Help meetings extremely useful as a forum to support shared working and access wider expertise. Our actions from these meetings often involve our SENDCo in regular catch-ups with parents to help with strategies at home. We may also support the child through weekly or fortnightly interventions such as group/play therapy or counselling. Family Support Workers are invaluable in supporting change for children, as are colleagues in school health, who often attend our meetings.

We work closely with outside agencies such as the Specialist Teacher Service, the Educational Psychology Service (on initiatives such as the Friendship Project), or a member of the CAMHS team may attend one of our staff meetings to support teachers with a particular issue. Our SENDCo also oversees provision for social skills groups providing Lego therapy, therapeutic story writing or support with self-esteem. Universal strategies, used across the school, include circle time, class worry boxes and feelings journals, the latter being offered individually rather than generally.

As in so many areas of teaching and learning, a great deal of resilience is required to sustain the momentum of support for children with SEMH. It can be very frustrating and there are often setbacks, however, as front-line professionals we are the people best placed to make the difference which enables these children not merely to access their education but to thrive and grow as they should. The alternative to this, for the child and their future life chances, can be bleak indeed.

Lynne Daniels

Head Teacher

Westgate Primary School

Read about the Primary SEMH Steering Group here.