What support will there be for children’s overall well-being.

The school offers a wide variety of pastoral support for pupils including the following:

• At Riddings Infant and Nursery School we use the Jigsaw mindfulness scheme to teach PSED (Personal, Social and Emotional Development- EYFS) / PHSE (Personal, Social, Health and Emotional- KS1). This is a whole school approach with all year groups working on the same theme or ‘puzzle’ each term. These lessons aim to provide pupils with the knowledge, understanding and skills they need to support the development of social skills and emotional literacy in turn supporting pupil wellbeing. You can find out more about the Jigsaw scheme here: PHSE | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)

•Small group and where relevant 1:1 evidence-led interventions to support pupils’ well-being are delivered to targeted pupils and groups. This includes programs such as ELSA, Lego Therapy, Positive Play and Attention Autism.

•When considering the needs of all pupils the whole of the school day is taken into account and support is provided for pupils who find both classroom times and other points in the day such as break time or lunch time difficult. Pupils are provided with support in developing strategies for both sensory and emotional regulation so that they are able to develop strategies for coping more effectively in different situations and this in turn supports developing social interaction skills.

• The school is committed to ongoing development aimed at ensuring that staff are able to effectively support the wellbeing of all pupils and in response to this are undertaking the BERT award and Autism Advocate Training over the next academic year (2023/24)

•Working closely with families is also important to meeting the needs of pupils effectively. All staff aim to work alongside pupils and their families to ensure that the most appropriate and effective provision is put in place to meet their needs and enable all pupils to make progress in their learning. In addition, the school has a Pastoral Lead (Mrs Bartlett) who is on site each day and who works closely with our Family Support Worker (Rachel Christian) and Wellbeing Mentor (Fiona Fox) too. More information about our Family support worker and our Early Help Offer can be found here: Family Wellbeing / School Early Help | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)

•The school has gained Healthy School status which evidences the work undertaken within the school to support pupils’ well-being and mental health as well as following the Jigsaw PHSE programme. In addition the school has achieved the Inclusion Quality Mark in 2022.

•A provision overview entitled SEND Support is available here: SEND/ Inclusion | Riddings Infant and Nursery School (secure-primarysite.net)  and includes an overview of the range of support and provision available at Riddings Infant and Nursery. If you have any further questions regarding this please speak with your child’s class teacher or the school SENCO.