Parent Update - Mental Health Awareness and Support at WCSA
At WCSA it is our mission to support young people when it comes to mental health. We currently have 4 ‘in house’ counsellors doing some incredible work in providing our students with a safe space to manage their challenges and we will soon be adding capacity to this team with 2 mental health wellbeing assistants.
The work that our counselling team undertake is invaluable with regards to supporting our students with a huge variety of mental health difficulties – particularly given the frustrating, restricted access that young people have to external agencies at the present time. However, we have identified that there is more that we can do. When it comes to mental health, we believe that prevention is better than cure and are ready to deliver strategies across the entire school to ensure that young people get the best possible chance of staying mentally resilient:
The week beginning 13th May 2019 is ‘Mental Health Awareness Week’. On this week, we will be launching our first ‘prevention is better than cure’ strategy called ‘Let’s Talk’. ‘Let’s Talk’ is a FREE PARENT/CARER ONLY COURSE that will run At school for 4 weeks on a Tuesday evening from 5pm – 6:30pm. The course will be delivered by an extremely experienced local psychotherapist, Carrie White who has developed a course for parents using the method of ‘transactional analysis’. The intended outcome is to enable parents/carers to communicate far more effectively with their children allowing them to support them better and build a closer relationship.
If you would like to sign up to this course (numbers will be restricted and on a first come first served basis), please complete the attached form and send it into school for the attention of the counselling team or email to express your interest to:
wgriffin@worle-school.org.uk
‘LET’S TALK’
“I don’t know what’s going on in my child’s head! We don’t talk any more. We don’t understand each other. How can I get through to them”
You know the feeling! One minute you’re having a normal conversation with someone, and the next you’re fighting or one of you has shut down or stormed off.
In many cases, there’s a breakdown. The conversation has failed to achieve its goal, whether it’s being heard, solving a problem, feeling connected, making a decision, getting a job done … no-one ends up feeling happy, that’s for sure!
Most of us have experienced communication breakdowns that make us feel worried and concerned about our child’s mental health. We worry that they are becoming strangers. We fear our problems might be affecting them but don’t know how to talk about them.
… If you’d like to change this and learn how to communicate better, come along to one of our ‘Lets Talk’ courses … who knows? It could just help!
Carrie White
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I would like to attend the free ‘Let’s Talk’ parenting course starting on Tuesday 14th May from 5pm – 630pm.
My Name:…………………………………………………………………
My child’s name:………………………………………………………….
Year group:………….