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Safeguarding and support for pupils

 
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NAHT members are at the forefront of safeguarding children. School leaders are committed to keeping children safe, so they can learn well. NAHT believes that all pupils should receive the support they need to maintain their well-being and achieve their potential, both within school and from wider services including health and social care.

NAHT is campaigning to:

Enable schools to play their part in supporting pupils' well-being

  • Lobby for pupils and schools to get the support they need from wider services including health, social care, police and youth services
  • Influence the implementation of the proposals from the mental health green paper, including the senior lead for mental health and mental health support teams
  • Support schools to access relevant, high-quality training and resources to enable pupils to exercise their right to support for their mental well-being.

 

Support schools to safeguard and protect pupils

  • Engage with the DfE over proposed changes to the role of the Designated Safeguarding Lead
  • Influence changes to Keeping Children Safe In Education, Working Together and Sexual Violence and harassment guidance
  • Campaign to improve online safety for children and young people
  • Press the government to ensure home educated children are adequately safeguarded
  • Promote guidance and resources to support schools to protect children at risk of harm including involvement with violence and other crime.

 

Enable schools to support vulnerable groups of pupils

  • Campaign to ensure pupils with SEND can receive the support they need from schools and wider services
  • Press for improved alternative provision and collaborative approaches across communities to support pupils excluded from school
  • Provide information to schools to help them to support disadvantaged children
  • Enable schools to make informed decisions regarding parental requests to home educate
  • Ensure reforms to behaviour guidance and networks is evidence-based and appropriate for all schools and a diverse pupil population. 
 

Mental Health in Schools Initiative - ACAMH

The Association of Child & Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH) has recently launched an initiative aimed at teachers, to enable schools to access and use resources that can genuinely make a difference to the mental well-being and educational outcomes of young people.

The Mental Health in Schools initiative aims to produce a series of webinars for teachers to give evidence-based knowledge and best practice around current key issues in the mental health and well-being of children and young people.

The initiative is formed of two pilot series of webinars. The first series, Ask the Expert, consists of four webinars with an expert guest speaker, hosted by Professor Barry Carpenter. The webinars have been developed in collaboration with the education charity Coram Life Education and topics are rooted in the new statutory RSHE curriculum.

The second webinar series, Pedagogy in Practice, is aimed at creating engaging resources for teachers relating to mental health teaching themes in the RSHE framework aiming to stimulate innovative practice to meet curriculum requirements and support mental health across the school. The pilot phase will be developed in partnership with Chartered College of Teaching during the first half of 2022.


The next webinar in the Pedagogy in Practice series, Bullying and Loneliness – Pedagogy in Practice, is taking place on 20 September 2022. 

  • The webinar will take place at 3.45pm and you can register your interest for the event here.
  • Attendees will have access not just to the event itself, but also to supporting materials and resources to help with embedding effective practice in their schools.
  • It is exclusively for teachers and school leaders, and Chartered College of Teaching members. 



The next webinar in the Ask the Expert series, Eating Disorders, is taking place on 13 September 2022. You can register for this free webinar here. 


Recordings from the first three webinars of the 'Ask the Expert' series are available for free on the ACAMH website:


ACAMH has developed a teacher hub where you can access free resources from the Mental Health in Schools Initiative, including webinar recordings, events and research digests. It plans to develop a wider series of Ask the Expert and Pedagogy in Practice resources over the next 18 months, incorporating topics within the RSHE framework such as trauma, self-harm and bereavement.

To find out more about the initiative, and to keep up to date with the work of ACAMH, you can sign up for its newsletter via its website. 

First published 21 July 2022

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