Health & Wellbeing
Mental Health and Wellbeing at Merton Abbey Primary School
At Merton Abbey Primary School, we aim to promote positive mental health and wellbeing for our whole school community (children and adults), and recognise how important mental health education, emotional wellbeing and support is to our lives in just the same way as physical health. We recognise that children’s mental health is a crucial factor in their overall wellbeing and can affect their learning and achievement. Our role is to support all members of the school community with their mental health & wellbeing.
Just like physical health, we all have mental health, and there are things we can do to take care of our mental health every day. The Five Ways to Wellbeing are a collection of daily practices we can include in our regular routine in order to build our resilience and sustain positive mental health.
The Five Ways are:
- Connect with Others- by talking, playing, sharing, listening
- Be Active- in any way: running, play time, sports, dancing, yoga, walking
- Keep Learning- enjoy being curious
- Take Notice- through mindfulness, relaxation, observation, awareness
- Give to Others- be kind, help others, lend a hand
PARENTING AND MENTAL HEALTH SUPPORT
As a school, we are supported by the Merton NHS Mental Health Support Team, which includes a clinical psychologist and Education Wellbeing Practitioners.
The team offers to parents:
- Workshops and webinars on mental health and parenting
- Coffee mornings
- Signposting to appropriate services
- Early intervention: Free (NHS funded) one-to-one, parent-led guided self-help for parents who are starting to struggle with challenging behaviour and childhood anxiety
Parenting can often feel hectic, without enough time to think about what you’re doing to get the best out of your child. It is easy to become stuck in a cycle of reacting to children’s emotions and behaviour in the moment without having the space to think proactively about how you’re managing them and setting them up to do well. We work with parents to help them to understand their children’s feelings and behaviour patterns and put in place effective strategies so that family life can feel calmer and happier.
Visit their YouTube channel for a great selection of mental health and wellbeing videos for parents and young people:
SWLSTG Education Wellbeing Service -Parents/Carers/Children/YP/
Look on Eventbrite to see their menu of free online webinars for Primary school parents.
Primary Parents - NHS Wellbeing Workshops | Eventbrite
If you would like more information, please contact Lisa Laker llaker@mertonabbey.merton.sch.uk at the school or the NHS team directly by email: Wave6MertonMHST@swlstg.nhs.uk
The Mental Health Lead in school is Lisa Laker