Belonging at St John's and our Emotionally Friendly Settings Approach

St John's Church of England Primary School recognise that children's physical and emotional health and well-being is fundamental and also believe that for children to thrive within our community, their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development should be fostered and supported. Emotional Health and Well Being has a very high profile within our school.

Our staff work with our local authority and NHS partners and are working towards St John's Primary being accredited with the Bronze award for Emotionally Friendly Schools (EFS). EFS is a whole-setting approach to supporting the emotional health and wellbeing of children and young people, staff and parents/carers. Further information can be found on the EFS website

To further support wellbeing and pastoral care, fostering a sense of belonging is at the heart of all we do at St John's and is at the centre of our school.  We believe in the 'whole child' approach. By this we mean that each child, no matter what their age, background, culture or race, deserves to be heard, respected and championed. Nurturing our children to become all that they are created to be is our goal; creating an environment to enable them to flourish and thrive.

We have clear Safeguarding and Health and Safety Policies and Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) provides a context for supporting every child's wellbeing through teaching and learning.

Well-being

Through our bespoke pastoral provision, we aim to ensure the well-being of all our children. 
As part of this, we have a range of approaches - with our own Pastoral Lead offering play work and play therapy, group and individual work and the Mental Health Support team working in our school to support those with low mood or anxiety.  We also can take a class approach - for example to support transition we carried out a strength and difficulty questionnaires with all of our Y6s to see where each child's strengths and difficulties lie, ahead of the move to high school. This brilliant tool helps us to help us build a bespoke picture of each of our children. It allows us to meet the needs of each of our children in all areas, not just academically.

We run a range of groups to support well-being and regular parent events too.  We share information about these at our half termly Family Breakfasts to which all family members are welcome or ask at the office for more information.