Educational Psychology Service - Webinar 1 Recording - Wellbeing for Education Return - Video and audio transcripts

hi there and thanks for joining our presentation today on the well-being for education return project um some practitioners in your school already may have attended the live training and you're watching the recorded version my name is Sophie Pitt and I'm one of the educational psychologists in Coventry and I've got with me today Lizzy who's a trainee psychologist in Coventry. Okay so just a note to say that the well-being for education return project is developed and funded by the department for education the department for health and social care and it's partnered with Public Health England and NHS improvement so it's a government-funded project that we've been lucky enough to be leading on in Coventry and there's copyright information here that all of the material originally came from Mind and the Royal College of Psychiatrists we have adapted and amended parts of it but just to make it clear that's where the content originally came from and from the Anna Freud Network which there's a link there to find lots of interesting research studies and information if you wanted to find out more

so throughout this webinar we'll be drawing from Coventry's back to school survey which was developed by a team of eps and a representative from SENDIASS in Coventry's back to school survey 942 pupils took part from 54 primary schools 17 secondary four special and two independent schools ranging from reception to year 14. a key finding was that staff needed to be aware that children are experiencing a range of feelings about their return to school some felt happy excited and relaxed others felt worried it appeared to be that the older the respondent was the more worried they felt about returning to school eighteen percent of early years in key stage one were worried 21 of key stage two 25 of key stage 3 31 of key stage 4 and 5. page 19 in the report presents a table that summarizes actions that people think would be helpful to promote their overall well-being by meeting learning needs social needs and emotional needs there are general implications as well as those are specific to both primary and secondary schools the links are on the slide and we'll be considering key findings from the survey throughout the webinar and just to say as well we've we've since done another survey and the results of that are just in the process of being analysed and like lizzie said they'll be they'll be fully analysed and shared once they're ready

the well-being for education return webinar training is divided into seven sections that are shown on the slide starting with the whole school approach as we think the whole school approach is key the COVID-19 crisis is an opportunity to bolster whole school systems to support well-being and build resilience in whole school communities this builds on complements existing initiatives such as the green paper on mental health and well-being and education neuroscience of understanding learning and growth focuses upon both resilience and well-being building staff and children well-being and resilience happens through the use of a relational framework and we will apply the approach as outlined in the webinar by discussing how we could use them in some illustrative scenarios we will outline some warning signs you might see in children that indicate they need some additional emotional support and signposting to resources and organizations that can provide further information and support for yourself we recognise we're supporting school staff at this very difficult time and that key messages apply to adults as well as the students we would like to highlight that the principles described throughout the webinar apply to all ages and people from parent to child and from teachers to senior management and all of the school and college staff we recognise that we've all had different experiences even if we live in the same area or locality we may know someone who's been directly affected or suffered a bereavement or may have been sheltered and safe may have been able to spend time with parents due to workplaces being supportive or the government verdo scheme or parents may have needed to work which limited time available to support with learning it may have difficult may have been difficult for some parents to support learning due to speaking different languages or having a lack of confidence in their own skills the children of key workers may also have been not had regular contact with their parents the slide illustrates for us we are not all in the same boat but we are in the same storm and we encourage you to remember compassion for yourself and for each other you may be familiar with the concept of maslow's hierarchy which proposes that all human beings have a hierarchy of needs with our most basic needs such as hunger warmth rest and safety taking precedence over our higher order needs such as feeling a sense of belonging feeling respected and realizing our potential but in many ways the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted our ability to have our basic needs met the virus threatens our feelings of safety and security our physical health and for many families it has indirectly depleted physiological needs of food and shelter by causing unemployment and economic damage our feelings of belonging have been undermined through social distancing and self-isolation causing separation loneliness and disconnection within and between families and communities so it is no wonder that we may be struggling to feel good about ourselves struggling to feel productive inspired or energized in light of this it's crucial that we show compassion to ourselves and one another we are most likely expecting that we should be functioning normally in a society and situation that is anything but normal so show yourself some self-compassion

the key learning objectives of the well-being for education material program are listed on this slide the term psycho education refers to using psychosocial methods to support recovery of well-being and strengthening resilience informed normalization making full use of whole-school approaches community networks statutory networks of supports and generally social scaffolding we aim to avoid the inappropriate labelling of ordinary distress as illness but the importance of being alert to the more important relative minority who do have poor mental health and may need more help

so we'll start on the first section of this webinar now so you may be familiar with this graphic you may have seen it before but it's a it's a pre-existing framework for thinking about how we can support a mental health and well-being at a whole school level so at the heart of this model we've got leadership and management in the middle and we know that it's really crucial that the leadership management team of the school are on board with a particular principle for that principle then to be filtered down to the rest of the school so the heart of this model is leadership management support and in championing um promoting well-being and then there's different aspects going all around it so we've got curriculum teaching and learning so actually teaching children about social emotional mental health we've got enabling student voice so collecting people views and allowing this to influence the decisions that are made in school staff development so making sure that staff are receiving adequate training in understanding their you know their um children's ability ability to regulate for example well-being so they've got an education around supporting children's well-being but also that they know how to develop their own sense of well-being and like lizzy was just saying having compassion for themselves and practicing self-care so that one's got a bit of a two-pronged approach at the bottom we've got identifying need and monitoring impact of interventions so this is us doing things like whole school screening activities finding out what the needs of our children are putting in intervention and then monitoring that over time working with parents and carers and making sure that they've got a voice in the decision-making targeted support and appropriate referral so they can hear about how schools can um think of the children that need the highest level of support and refer them into whatever services are relevant and generally an ethos an environment that promotes respect and values diversity so these eight principles are from Public Health England um to support children's you know mental health healthy minds kind of project how this is called healthy mind and it's a good way for to think about how your school are doing at the moment so as a brief kind of reflection activity you just pause this video and have a think for your setting that you currently work in if you could identify one area one principle that you're doing really well with and it's an area of strength and then one area that's an area for development so lots of school leaders at the minute have been having consultations with the educational psychology service have been doing exactly this task but it'd be really good to hear kind of your thoughts on it if you just pause the video have a reflection and then maybe share that with your school centre or school lead in terms of what you think the setting to do well what maybe they need to develop further okay so we need to have a little think about how the pandemic may affect learning in schools we know that this will be a really individual thing for each child but we started to pick up on some general trends so we've got here observed negative so we might find that learning is effective because children are worried they're stressed they're anxious they've experienced bereavement they've had changes in their mood they're confused at what's going on they feel angry you may notice changes in their behaviour their ability to pay attention to listen and the inequalities that already existed in the school between different groups of children you may find that those inequalities have kind of grown as a result of this there may be an impact on relationships that's relationship between peers and peers in adult children and adults there may be decreased flexibility thinking so that they might be a little bit more rigid when they return to school not as flexible as perhaps when they've had lots and lots of school experience they may feel that things are a little bit out of their control so they've got a limited sense of agency because everything around them has been so unpredictable and so unknown and they've had no control over whether they go to school or not um so there may be impacts of that and overall you might find that they're just a little bit more close to learning um as a result of all these things however it's important to always take a balanced view so there are definitely some observed positives that we're finding there may be increased compassion as people are needing to care for others and understand that actually we all need to care for each other so that we're healthy as a community um and sharing concern that community-mindedness in terms of say following social distance and we all need to do it to protect each other and that kind of mentality might increase compassion in children as a result there may be opportunities we may have children that come back really positive and ready for learning maybe they missed it and they're ready to embrace it again there might be new relationships so perhaps for children that were in school for under a vulnerable or key worker place there may be new relationships that blossom there or through online learning there may be relationships that have been forged there may be an increase in flexible thinking and coping mechanisms because they've had to apply the same kind of um structure of school but in a very different environment in a very different way so you may find that they've got increased levels of flexibility um and feeling in control so in essence we can we can look at it in either way the positives and negatives and we can be ready to embrace both again as a reflection point you can you can pause the video now if you want to and have a little think about in your own setting what do you think are the positives and the negatives of the children how do you think their learning is affected by the pandemic can you think of positive and negative things

okay let's take our attention for a moment in thinking about the most vulnerable groups the ones that may be particularly vulnerable during the pandemic so research has indicated that our BAME community are black and ethnic minorities the adults are at a higher risk of dying from covid19 the sharp increases in anxiety and self-harm amongst blamed children young people so the structural inequalities discrimination and racism that have already existed in society we may we may not find that they're exacerbated by the pandemic so a particularly vulnerable group we'd like to pay attention to are our black and ethnic minority children also those living in poverty and workless households and those in poor housing or homeless are always a priority for us but they may be particularly at risk during the pandemic and there are lots of other groups that you can read here so families with parental conflict mental mental health or more physical health issues those that are in the vulnerable categories in terms of domestic abuse violence or neglect um lgbt community so there's lots of renewable groups so this list is not exhaustive um there are lots of other groups that are vulnerable in society to the pandemic and that we need to put our attention to but it's just to really start us thinking that like lizzy said earlier we are all in you know the same storm but we're in different boats we've got different levels of challenge and there's there are certain groups that may be more vulnerable it's just to draw attention to those groups and think about is there anything different or additional to that we need to do to support those groups okay and this just continues with some more examples those are pre-existing health issues young carers children with send learning disabilities adults who live alone and maybe have been more vulnerable to social isolation okay but again this list is not exhaustive

okay so we've got a quote here there's a few quotes and case studies and vignettes as we go through but this one is it's a real quote from a student in year 10 and they said that when my teacher noticed something was wrong when he listened to me it made all the difference i was beginning to feel desperate i felt low sometimes even tearful I've been missing my friends and locked lockdown and sport and he suggested that i get more involved in the drama group i used to love drama and helped get the props set up with my friend i just felt things lightened up i felt like i was back and it all seemed different and better again so what this is trying to evidence really is our power as educators and those working in school settings that actually we can do really on the surface tiny things small things for children but actually they can have a real impact on their mental health and well-being and what this person did here was to use their knowledge of the child to remind them of an interest that they had to try and reinvigorate them and try to connect them back with the community so it's just to say that we have got a real role in children's well-being and it can be just the smallest of things that we do that make the biggest differences using our relationship using our connections listening to what the issue is are all really key parts of protecting children's wellbeing

okay i'll hand over to lizzy again now so section sorry liz i'm just gonna say this video um we're not able to play it today but we will share a link when we share the link to this video sorry lizzy okay so in section two we're going to be looking at the neuroscience trying to understand learning and growth well-being and resilience and focusing upon the key question how can we learn during the stresses of the pandemic and support growth so there'll be a link to that video which they just mentioned and where Dan Sieg will share some neuroscience about the integration of body mind and social life for well-being so after you've watched it take a moment to think about what you're like at regulating yourself so how easily can you control how you react to things and differences in this when you're tired or anxious versus when you're happy and alert so the model is really key to understand and use in college and in class with anyone trying to explain trauma stress informed support this is psychoeducative linking back to the aims and empowering so to emphasize here how our minds can become integrated i.e parts of the brain working together across thoughts feelings and well-being to support a mind open for learning and growth first is our mind becoming disintegrated where the key parts of the brain for survival are activated and concentrating keeping us safe and that's using the majority of our cognitive resource leaving less cognitive resource for the other areas of the brain such as those involved in higher order thinking language problem solving so our brain's recognizing a stress or fear or trauma which is leading to evolutionary responses of fight flight and freeze and the mind that is closed or closing to learning and growth and understanding this is essential as it links to trauma informed support so

sorry Sophie I've gone and I haven't got that um slide next oh sorry. on this side we will cons we can we'll consider the impact of being calm which we can see in the green zone on this diagram and the thinking about the green zone parts of the brain that are working together on learning so these are the open pathways and in contrast on the red side we can see the impacts on learning of feeling panicked and when the survival part of our brain takes over so the key idea is that positive feelings such as interest and inspiration open up our cognitive pathways and stress response system triggered by negative emotions that close our cognitive pathways so the broaden and build model provides further illustration highlighting the impact of the stress response on executive cognitive functions of attention and concentration the mind is overly focused on threats and danger and the mind's field of vision narrows this makes sense because if you're in danger and focus on the risk and act fast but it doesn't help in the classroom so the boarding and build theory describes the formal function of a subset of positive emotions including joy interest contentment and love a key proposition is that these positive emotions broaden an individual's momentary thoughts action repertoire joy sparks the urge to play interest sparks are urged to explore contentment sparks the urge to savour and integrate and love sparks of the curving cycle of each of these urges within safe closed relationships the broadened mindsets arising from these positive emotions are contrasted to the narrowed mindsets sparked by many negative emotions such as attack or flee a second key preposition concerns the consequences of these broadened mindsets by broadening an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire whether through play exploration or similar activities positive emotions promote discovery of novel and creative actions ideas and social bonds which in turn build that individual's personal resources ranging from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological resources importantly these resources function as reserves that can be drawn undated to improve the odds of successful coping and survival a practical thing to consider in relation to preventing the panic zone is carefully thinking about what educational content is covered when some schools or colleges may plan on restarting with completely new content which might be difficult whereas others might be planning on recapping and building up developing learning and confidence gradually

on this slide we can see what helps to engage our thinking brain so the key idea is that like goldilocks is porridge you need some that's not too cold or little not too hot or too much just warm and enough right so some stress and some challenge is normal and indeed required for robust resilience but how much is okay remember the stress performance curves up to a point it's okay and when we want to stretch learning and growth this is required so we want to create the sweet spot the learning zone so that student is stretched challenged and ready to grow we don't want them to be in the panic zone where they're over stressed and learning is blocked or in the comfort zone where things are safe and boring and they're not challenged we need to be aware of cultural biases and how we perceive and communicate this giraffes and notice when a child's in the panic zone thinking back to the back to school survey many pupils indicated a desire for academic demands to be gradually increased throughout term many also sought reassurance they wanted to know plans to address gaps in their learning would like more opportunities to engage in preferred activities to help them settle back into school we recognise that we're already well into the term at this point and it may be that increase in demands has been placed appropriately and the children are coping well if you're thinking about the return to school or about a class or group of children in school that might not be coping so well this could be something that you need to consider about scaling things back and bringing things in gradually for longer than you would in typical circumstances

so what helps to engage our thinking brain so the brain hang model is a really good way of thinking about um the structure of the brain so if we imagine that our arm is the brain stem the hand is the brain and the thumb is the central part of the brain this is our threat system the evolutionary survival response system neuroreception where we're looking out scanning the environment and scanning our own thoughts and memories for danger the fingers part of the hand represent the higher order skills of the brain linked to language problem solving and planning when we are in the green zone when we're feeling calm not overwhelmed or in the panic zone all of our fingers are down and we are keeping the lid on we're feeling able to learn we're feeling positive calm and motivated but when that narrow section and the inside the evolutionary survival response that's in the thumb is activated it flips up the fingers which means we might flip our lids and it draws energy away from the thinking brain away from those language skills problem solving skills and planning skills so threat and fear and anxiety shifts to a negative balance which draws the energy away from the thinking brain and makes it difficult to learn so we really want children to be in the green zone okay where they're keeping their lid on so that they've got a coherent integrated mind open for learning and growth

on this slide we're returning to Maslow's hierarchy which we talked about earlier we will consider how we can support ourselves and the children and young people we work with to move from the shaky foundation to a secure foundation for learning well-being and building a resilience and the secure foundations are formed when we feel safe and secure we feel a warm and friendly welcome we have a sense of belonging through connectedness built on mutual trust we experience curiosity and interest on repeated basis this is the broaden part of the broaden and build theory that we just spoke about earlier our cognitive pathways are then open repeatedly to build the intellectual social and psychological resources again linking to that build part of the broaden and build theory of positive emotions during in the analysis of the commentaries return to school survey the most common thing that people said they're looking forward to about returning to school is socializing and seeing friends and teachers so it just shows that they really are seeking out social connection as part of their recovery

we know that a lot of schools have had emotion coaching training so you may be familiar with this approach this is an approach that aims to teach children to recognize and label their feelings and problem-solve appropriate and effective ways of regulating their emotions the key to emotion coaching from the coaching perspective is to recognize and validate a child's feelings especially when we're linking to that brain hand model and they've flipped their lid once they're calm and those fingers have come back down it's then the discussion around setting limits on behaviour and being able to problem-solve with the child to help them learn how to cope with these emotions move forward on the slide you may have seen this before is an illustration of a way that an adult can emotion coach and interact with a child so in the cartoon the child is saying my turtle is dead he was alive this morning oh no what a shark is a response from the adult okay so they're recognizing the child's feelings he was my friend to lose her friends can hurt so it's validating feelings that that child's having i taught him to do tricks you two had fun together i fed him every day you really cared about that turtle so it's managing the emotion managing the situation recognizing empathizing validating and labelling with the use of language the emotions that the children are feeling

there are four methods that we use typically use when children are emotional we can either dismiss the emotions um offer a distractive approach an assertive approach or use this emotion coaching approach which is evidence-based um to suggest that it really improves children's emotional literacy and understanding

thanks lizzy okay so in section three we're going to look at actions to build resilience and well-being but before we get on to that we've got to be really clear about what we're talking about when we say well-being there's lots of different definitions in the research but in broad terms it's feeling good and functioning well so it can be subjective it you know it's around our perceived view of our own life satisfaction so it's not you know compared with anybody else's view it's your own personal subjective view around your life satisfaction how you feel in terms of positive emotions what level of purpose and meaning you've got in your life and again that's a that's a personal um judgment of what you've got going on in your life but it can also be objective so we can't have positive well-being feeling you know feeling good and function well unless we've got the basics adequate food good physical health feeling safe education and learning finance relationships so there's both subjective and objective ways of thinking about well-being but being physically well and staying and staying as healthy as we can belonging to a social group having a social network feeling included in social activities all contributes to good feelings of positive well-being feeling they can function well emotionally so linking back to what lizzie says that they can experience emotions they can children can understand what they're going through they've got a label for it they've got an understanding of it spiritual and you know a child may have um a faith or a spiritual belief and having that integrated into their life can bring that meaning and purpose that we talked about in the subjective um aspects of well-being intellectuals that can contribute in terms of feeling like you're ready to learn you're open to new ideas and experiences and challenges that can be positive influencer and well-being and economically that there's not a burden of stress through financial pressures so students learn best and staff can teach best and parents compare invest when they have a sense of well-being so again it's not just about the children young people's well-being it's about your personal well-being because the better your well-being is the better you can instil positive well-being in others so that's a bit of a definition and what we mean by well-being and what do we mean by resilience so we're thinking about more than well-being when we're thinking about resilience we're thinking about a person's capacity to recover quickly in the face of difficulties the ability to get over things and bounce back from adversity and it's a bit of a cycle here that the higher our wow being the higher levels of resilience so the higher levels of resilience the higher levels of well-being so they're really really closely linked and they're also linked to learning because as lizzy said while being helps learning and growth which then leads to more resilience if you've got a child with good levels of well-being they're in that green zone they're open and ready for learning that their cognitive pathways are open to taking new information when they're learning and they're growing they're developing more resilience to cope with those adverse experiences and those bumps in the road so if we get well-being right and we get resilience right the learning is a strong kind of part of that they can recover quickly and they can they can strengthen their learning so it's all interlinked and connected so what predicts um resilience we've got a nice kind of helpful diagram here to help us think about the different aspects so if we think about what can we do to kind of nurture resilience we can think about where it comes from so we've got what we're born with we've all got individual temperaments and ways from our kind of genetic predisposition to things just who we are we've got our nurturing environments we've got what environment we were born into what do we grow up with what were the rules and family kind of dynamics in life you know how did that affect your resilience and then you've got events so you've got positive and negative events through your life that affects your ability to bounce back from adversity to be resilient so it's it's got three elements it's kind of who we are born with what our environment has been and what particular events and experiences we've had so a whole school approach to resilience builds on an understanding and supporting each child's uniqueness so knowing that each child has a different set of these each child was born different they're born into a different environment and they've had different things happen to them so taking that very unique approach to children's well-being helps us to know how best to support their development of resilience

okay but it's really helpful to know what actually boosts resilience what factors contribute to it and this is another nice graphic to help us think about that so the fact there are factors that are within individual kind of control so being able to think positively so if we support young people to be able to be optimistic to be positive to think of positive things that will increase well while being in resilience if we teach children specific ways of regulating and managing their stress and emotions such as emotion coaching that leads to resilience so those are kind of individual factors that we can support the child to do but they're based you know that their skills that we want the children to develop themselves then we've got community factors for well-being enjoying school in college is a really important one here so there's lots and lots of research that shows that a child's sense of belonging in their school is a huge predictor of resilience and well-being so feeling that they are part of school and enjoying it and having positive emotions while they're at school is a real big contributor to developing resilience physical activities are also really um strongly linked with resilience so being active particularly being outdoors so there's a research that looks at whether a person does exercise inside or outside and the research indicates that being outside to exercise has better impacts on our physical and our mental health so getting outside and doing exercise and physical activities is a strong predictor of resilience having supportive social networks so that's that's stuff in school um that's the peer relationships that's that's family um it's you know any kind of social networks that they've got and then we've got a segment here around strong family relationships so again thinking about the unique child we know that the children will have very different family experiences to one another. They'll have different experiences of being outdoors. They'll have different perceptions of school and whether they enjoy it and they feel that sense of belonging.

but as a school or college we can promote wider kind of community activities peer networks we can support with friendships mentoring and sports clubs there are lots that we can do to play into these factors that will increase resilience and if we go back to what we said if we increase resilience we increase well-being we increase learning so they're all interlinked

okay so relationships are pivotal and every interaction is an opportunity to grow so every interaction is an intervention and that's a really nice quote and it goes back to one of the points that I made earlier around that quote it can be the smallest things that we do within our daily interactions with children that have the biggest impact on their overall positive emotions their well-being their resilience because we learn through the interactions in the relationships that we have our relationships really do matter they help our brains to grow and develop and they teach us kind of habits and patterns of communicating so by having a positive and warm relationship with a child by interacting with them daily by using your knowledge of the child to interact with them and to greet them they all improve on their own resilience and well-being so never underestimate the power of your interactions with young people every interaction is an intervention

okay this is another activity that you can um pause for in a moment but we're thinking here around how can staff in in schools and in settings how can they nurture while being in resilience and we've got some ideas of activities here down the left-hand column so communicate support for people include pupil and parent voice making space and time for creative and physical activities for reflection taking small steps to build resilience finding new ways to play which is essential in covert 19 times and focusing on what children can do rather than what they can't do so here's six kind of examples of how staff can support well-being and resilience on the right-hand column we'd like you to just in a moment pause and think about what do you think is would be the psychological impact of each of those actions if we got those actions right so for example if we if we really did a good job with including pupil and parent voice what would be the psychological impact of doing that so if you just pause for a minute either jot some notes down or do it mentally but think about what would the cycle like psychological impact be

okay so hopefully you've had a chance to do this but each of these factors on the left increase resilience in different ways so by communicating support for everybody the psychological effect of that is validating them knowing that somebody is unique they're going through a different experience to the person next to them and that you understand and validate that experience is tremendously powerful for resilience by collecting and acting on people in parent voice and carer's voice we're empowering that community sense that we said is really important to kind of holistic well-being if we make people feel that they've got some agency and some autonomy and some choice and control they feel empowered so by collecting their views and acting on them we're empowering them so making space and time for physical and creative activities increases self-expression and self-confidence which in turn will lead to resilience which will in turn lead to well-being taking small steps enables children to feel that they're safe taking very small steps builds up trust and relationships and resilience finding new ways to play we can link back to those positive emotions that lizzie helped us to understand in the broaden and build theory we can broaden their capacity to learn by helping them to experience positive relationships through play we can reduce their stress through play we can allow them to express their feelings you know for example in pretend play we saw lots of changes in pretend play to go in the incorporated 19 things like cueing and hand sanitizing so we can let them play out their feelings and their understanding of the world they can foster imagination and it can be quite a collaborative and creative activity all of these things then lead to improvements in well-being and resilience helping to focus on what children can do nurtures that sense of hope and optimism that's really really needed at this time if things are unpredictable and we're not sure where we're going to go we can quite quickly become negative but if there's a sense of hope that can protect sense of well-being and resilience okay so these are the building blocks of becoming more resilient and these are what staff can do in schools actively

section four we're going to be thinking about the implementation of actions across the whole school or college life and we're going to begin with looking at supporting staff

well-being so on the side you can see that we can't pull from an empty vessel so this is encouraging us to think about prioritizing your own well-being and self-care it's like the analogy we hear put on your oxygen mask before helping others when we're on a plane and we can't pull from an empty vessel so self-regulation needs to take place before you can co-regulate with others so maybe take a minute to think what are your restorative practices what grounding activities do you engage in when attempting to self-regulate and if you would like to you could share some of these ideas with your colleagues i know it might be helpful for us to share some examples for me it's definitely taking a walk with the dog without kids and it's getting a bath and it's reading a book and you know we've all got these things that we do that promote self-care and it's it's really helpful to timetable those in and it's easier said than done and we do appreciate that but sharing ideas with your colleagues would be yeah would be great

so linking back to that job and we're going to be thinking about something called compassion fatigue so we also call this secondary traumatic stress so we need to be aware that you can develop compassion fatigue from exposure to trauma through the children who you work with so the quote there at the bottom of the slide says there is a cost to caring so trauma can take a toll on children families schools and communities also on school professionals any educator who works directly with traumatized children and adolescents is vulnerable to these effects of trauma referred to as compassion fatigue or secondary traumatic stress so being physically mentally or emotionally worn out or feeling overwhelmed by students traumas the best way to deal with compression fatigue is early recognitions so a few tips for you number one be aware of the signs you might find yourself having increased irritability irritability or impatience for students difficulty planning classroom activities and lessons decrease concentration denying that the traumatic events are impacting students or feeling normal detached intense feelings or intrusive thoughts about students trauma that don't reduce over time taking your worries home may be dreaming about students traumas so the second step is don't go it alone anyone who knows about stories of trauma needs to guard themselves against isolation whilst respecting the con confidentiality of your students you need to attend to yourself care get support by working in teams talking to others in your school and asking for support from administrators or colleagues step 3 is recognizing compassion fatigue as an occupational hazard when an education educator approaches students with an open heart and a listening ear compassion fatigue can develop all too often educators judge themselves as weak or incompetent for having strong reactions to students trauma compassion fatigue is not a sign of weakness or incompetence rather that it is a cost of caring step four is recognize the signs and seek help with your own traumas any adult helping children with trauma who has their own unresolved traumatic experiences is more at risk for compassion fatigue number five if you see signs in yourself talk to a professional if you're experiencing signs of compassion fatigue for more than two or three weeks seek counselling with a professional who is knowledgeable about trauma attend the self-care to guard your work becoming the only activity that defines who you are keep perspective by spending time with children and adolescents who are not experiencing traumatic stress take care of yourself by eating while and exercising engaging in fun activities taking a break during the work day finding time to self-reflect allow yourself to cry and also allow you to find things to laugh about really good advice there

so on this side you can see the five pre key principles of whole-school approach to recovery so this is looking at well-being in more depth through supporting well-being for everyone this maps across to ethos and environment staff development student voice and whole school principles we can look at this diagram and we can change the words in the level of complexity according to the age and the ability of the individual but the core principles across apply across all ages and stages that could be staff peoples parents or carers

so here we've got this adapted from the send whole school approach 2020 and on the left-hand diagram they're the five key principles to support the whole school approaches in recovery from a crisis with example questions to ask on the right-hand diagram you can use these in your practice try and reflect um and these questions you could maybe develop your own if you didn't want to use these ones and you could use these in a workshop for the school or the college

as sophie said sometimes it's easier said than done to be able to timetable in those key self-care activities so this slide is a really nice reflective tool to get you to think about staff well-being and this slide reflects to the five translates the five principles of recovery into actions for recovery so if we're thinking first of all putting emotional well-being first when we're feeling good what are we doing what are the strengths what matters in our work makes us passionate gives us motivation and drive that feel good satisfaction we're putting relationships that was so important linked to well-being in the front and centre who matters to us and who's there for us and it's connecting and reaching out to people when we do need self-care and support reaffirming the safety and routines and acknowledging that all the experiences that everybody's had linking back to that slide where you know different the same storm but we've all had different experiences so this slide is really nice and it's a nice way to try map well-being activities for yourself ideally as a whole staff or in a group or maybe an activity for a staff meeting we don't want to put pressure on staff to have lots on but sometimes it's just nice to know that there is an offer there to take time for their own well-being and this slide is critically important in synthesizing what we've been working through in the webinar into daily actions for whole school or college while being strengthened with resilience this is something your senior leadership team may be able to use to explore on the impact of providing 19 on themselves because we learn from what we see and everybody even school leaders are role models and we emotionally impact each other across the school and college community so each example can be translated into perhaps supporting children timetabling activities for them young people parents or carers because the principles are the same

so just a recap here on this slide of what we can do for staff well-being so make emotional well-being a priority for everybody try and use a whole school approach understand the threats to well-being and link to the pandemic develop those positive relationships support emotional regulation and protect time for reflection and supervision and building in those activities such as on the side before absolutely okay we're going to look at some examples now we'll look at two vignettes that can be used as models um for all ages and for staff pupils carers okay so we're trying to think about how everything we've said fits together so we've got the five key principles of recovery so well-being first reaffirming strengths relationships front and centre reaffirming safety and routine and acknowledging the loss and the change in the bereavement so they're the five principles that lizzie took us through this then links with the psychological first aid framework which is really really easy to remember it's it's look listen link look listen link so we're going to go over that a bit more detail but these two things um linked together just to say psychological first aid is a way of remembering um how to kind of deliver support for well-being and to promote that ethos of recovery and psychological well-being so what is it then so we've got look looking out for signs of distress listen even a short time of listening is helpful using empathy being understanding and being kind and then link the person that you're talking to with sources of support so link them to activities or link them to agencies or referrals or things to read or things to listen to so like i said this applies for when you're supporting children it supplies when you're supporting parents and carers and it applies when you're supporting the staff members and yourself you're looking out for signs of distress you're listening with an empathetic understanding ear and then you're linking them on for support so it's a really nice hopefully easy to remember way of kind of keeping your role as looking after everybody as well being included in your own your role is it's a nice way to remember your role really look listen and link

okay so let's um think about some kind of you know warning signs and things to look out for you're looking out for changes in people's demeanour or their behaviour so their general kind of way of being and when you know somebody you can spot these things so look out for knees look out for cues look out for subtle warning signs because we're not always overt with our with our difficulties lots of us can kind of smile when things are actually not okay so um look out for those subtle cues as well when we are as adults under a lot of stress we may fall to unhelpful kind of coping mechanisms so we may turn to alcohol misuse or substances we may become addicted to gambling or other things we may sabotage our closest relationships we may have sleeping difficulties and we may isolate ourselves so if we're noticing this in ourselves or in others and we're looking for this interactive with this it might be this is an indicator of um somebody having a difficult time with their mental health and their well-being if we talk a little bit about the next part listen so we didn't look now and listen there's listening and then there's listening in a particular way so we're really going to be thinking about active listening here so active listening is a really careful way of listening when we respond to the person who's talking really positively and with lots of encouragement reflecting back on what they're saying to check out that what you've heard is okay check out and summarize that what you've what you've gathered from the conversation is what they're thinking it's not judgmental active listening is about being there with the person hearing what they're saying but not inputting our own judgment or own beliefs on that it's not being afraid of silence so it's allowing those periods of silence that the other person can feel when they're ready it's asking very open questions so we're avoiding any question that would result in a yes no or short answer we're asking really really open questions you know can you can you tell me more how did that how did that come about or how does that make you feel really open questions respond inappropriately so it goes back to that emotion coaching emotion coach is not just an approach for children it's for adults as well if i'm if i'm sharing with lizzy something something personal and something difficult i'm not looking for an answer or response from lizzy i'm looking for her to validate and to understand so there's a really good clip here on on empathy versus sympathy we will share a link but if you wanted to look it up if you put into youtube renee brown empathy versus sympathy you'd see a really good indication of how different they are active listening is listening with empathy whereas lots of the kind of listening that we do in day-to-day life is sympathy which is very different so if you get time have a look at that clip she's she's really great and she talks through it so we're looking out for difficulties and we're listening but we're listening in a particular way in that active listening style

okay this is a nice um summary of that really we're reflecting back we're summarizing we're asking open questions we're given short words of encouragement reacting appropriately and we're clarifying what we heard to make sure that we've got it okay so this is really how do we listen carefully and how do we listen well some top tips there

okay then the last part of the look listen link framework is link which is about getting the right people on board it's about sign posting to the right services and agencies and support it doesn't always necessarily mean external support we can we can ask people to use their trusted friends and family the support or it could be you know referring into other services like psychology for children or um you know maybe the adult mental health service or cameras mental health service it depends on who you're talking to whether it's a parent or another staff person or a child you can also share links to things that you've read so online resources like think ninja um charities but it's about once you've done all that really active listening you've got an understanding of what the problem is help them to take a next step to improve their well-being direct them to something they can do they can read they can refer themselves into they can talk to so that you're making links that they can improve their own well-being okay so if we look if we think about how the psycho psychological first aid kind of fits in we're looking out for signs for distress we're preparing ourselves we're listening we're thinking about confidentiality so we need to be really clear on this we need to be if a friend a colleague or a people comes to you with something difficult you need to be really clear in terms of what you're going to do with the information where it's going to be shared we need to make sure that we don't make promises to children that we can't keep so confidentiality during the active listening process is really really key consider practical problem solving that you can do um but remember we're not there to solve their problems we're there to listen and validate so it's more about the listening than it is thinking of problems um solutions to the problems link them to support plan for kind of future support meetings and then continue that cycle keep looking out so even if you've had a conversation with the child you've you know referred them on appropriately you're still going back through this cycle you're being watchful you're looking out for changes in their behaviour you're listening actively and then you're linking them again to whatever you think they need so it's an ongoing cycle and it's just again to empower staff really to know that for some children and young people it's school or college that does provide that protective role in their lives when the other aspect of their lives so the home and their family life is difficult or challenging and you know this school can be such a safe base for the child but it can be their only safe base their only time that someone is looking out for their changes in their behaviour the only time that they can receive the act of listening or be directed to future support and other things to read or to do so just to emphasize the role of school settings there

okay so we're gonna think about a couple of examples here the first one is about tony who's a 40-year-old assistant headteacher working at a secondary school or college he's he notices peter who's 55 his head of English isn't quite managing as efficiently as normal his appearance has changed a little bit and he's unkempt he's worried and he speaks to angela who's the headteacher wondering how he can do something helpful so this links to the psychological first aid the look listening link he's looking at his colleague and he's just spotted that something isn't right he's not his usual self he doesn't look the same and he's going to seek support thinking about what can be done to support him

okay so we're thinking here about what can tony and angela do to support peter so angela has found a psychological first aid framework and suggested tony reads it and has a chat and has a chat with her about it thinking about what has been what has he noticed about peter what can he do to engage peter in talking and active listening so could he arrange a meeting with peter and use those active listening skills once he's done that what support or services can he link him to so that he can you know begin his journey to recovery

okay another example here we've got Jenny who's a 34-year-old year five class teacher she lives with her partner and her two young children who are six and four she's the only child in the main carer for her widowed mother who's 60 who lives nearby and is vulnerable because of diabetes she's been supporting children remotely during the pandemic but now has to return to work so this is a person with a lot on their plate professionally and in their own family and with a wider family with their mother so you know a lot of us can probably relate to I relate to the characters um that we've read about so far so what might you do so if we've had an example maybe pause for a minute and think about if you had jenny working you know as your colleague or in your team what would you do how would you use the look listen and link framework to be able to support jenny so if you pause now and have a little think of what you would do

okay hopefully you've been able to do that but thinking overall about school or college community of well-being we're going back to that model that we introduced at the start where the senior leadership are at the heart of it and what can they do what can senior leadership do to promote staff well-being so they can make emotional well-being a priority for the whole school and college they can ensure that the working environment is welcoming and it's high quality and the staff feel valued so like we said about children's sense of belonging being a strong predictor of well-being it's the same for us as adults if we feel that sense of belonging working in a positive environment where we feel part of it and we feel that our strengths are being noticed and our work is you know is being appreciated that's a a way to foster well-being it's normalizing the difficulties that staff are going through so we've got a propensity to try and minimize and and um kind of ignore the difficulties that we're going through in the hope of getting through it like a bit of a steam train but actually the best thing to do is acknowledge the feelings that everybody's going through as being completely and entirely normal given the current situation it's not medicalizing it or it's not ignoring it it's actually just normalizing it we're all having a slightly difficult a different time at the moment and it's remembering that the look listen link framework applies to both adults in school and parents and young people so in section six we're going to look at some warning signs in children and young people

so this links back to what sophia is just speaking about in the psychological first aid and this would be the look aspect so you might be noticing changes in the child's presentation so on the slide you can see there might you might see some of these things as you revisit the children and they might highlight warning signs warning signs of increased risk and especially minority groups of children who might need additional support so you might see that they've got persistent issues such as feeling sad day-to-day difficulties feeling overwhelmed issues that keep causing concerns acting out of character for their thoughts feelings or behaviours or showing behavioural distress so you might just want to refresh this and consider examples of staff pupils parents or carers whose behaviour might have looked like this and then you can consider what might have happened if you noticing these factors in any individuals then it might be useful to have a discussion about whether it be appropriate to refer them onto specialist services refer back to your critical incident planning in school consider the value and quality of support from adults that especially children young people already know and also remember the notion of watchful waiting rather than taking action straight away and try and link it to that um psychological first aid framework

so the next part of the framework you've looked already the next part is listen so here we've got a listening aspect where parents may raise concerns about child so this slide highlights some but it's not exhaustive the key worries that parents or carers have had during the covered 19 pandemic and its impacts across school college life events and learning they might be worried about the safety of their child especially if they're in more vulnerable groups such as vain children sen children children who have older relatives or may have some obesity issues and they might be worried about the children settling back into class might be transitioning to the new school perhaps it's a new teacher a new peer group that they didn't know so well before the lockdown school closures they'll be worried about the emotional impact of any life events that have happened during the COVID-19 pandemic such as loss and bereavement experiencing economic difficulties being aware of their parents job issues or they might have even been breakdown in relationships and lockdown that they've witnessed they might be worried about their impact on their child's learning is their child able to reconnect with friends with school get used to routines again and it's particularly important to know how some vulnerable groups have become much more vulnerable during COVID-19 than others so it's really key to highlight um being staff people and parents and carers increased risk and vulnerability and be putting measures in to detect these difficulties and support recovery strengthen the well-being for this group of people within school so Public Health England and the emerging evidence suggests excess mortality due to covert 19 is higher in the bame populations especially individuals of black African or black Caribbean ethnicity who may have been at the highest increased risk risks are associated with the coping 19 transmission the morbidity and mortality can be exacerbated by the housing challenges faced by some members of the brain groups the most recent research from the uk suggests that both ethnicity and income inequality are independently associated with Copenhagen mortality individuals from vain groups are more likely to work in occupations with higher risk of covenanting exposure and they are more likely to use public transportation to travel to their essential work so when considering your community you can maybe think how this research could relate or could possibly impact some children staff or parents that part of your school community

so what does decreased wellbeing look like so it can be hidden and it's difficult to see but this is an important part of the psychological first aid and this is where it's important to make links children and parents and people in the community will need someone to link with them so they might be able to see that they're worried or anxious or behaving sad or looking bored or isolating themselves they may have poor concentration and no productivity they might be being overly aggressive might be looking really sad or having ticks and twitches and there are some links to sessions by mine dad that you could refer to we'll go into a bit more detail about the warning signs and ways to help if you can see any of these um factors of decreased well-being in the children you'll be in because some of them might have found being off school really easy and you know more beneficial and but others may have really missed school

so more tips to aid the recovery this slide adds some more tips on how to support everyone with adaptations for age helps us remember the components of good listening the active listening that Sophie was talking about relationship building encouraging creative expression and supporting regulation of emotions so that our minds can remain integrated and open for learning and growth we are not flipping our lids into disintegrated states and closing off from learning and stunting of growth so we could use take five at school in the big book of karma's use metacognition strategies tree of life narrative approaches encouraging circles of friends circles of courage and children young people voice gathering tool use resources from the mentally health school healthy schools toolkit use well-being journals to help children reflect on their real well-being and make sense of what's been happening

so just a few key points here that many people will retain their well-being and resilience some will need more some report to cover a whole school approach can help build relationships flexible coping and give people a renewed sense of agency we need to value emotional well-being safety in routines and all of this off recaps what I've been saying so far that if we can do this we can help maximize learning and growth there's a nice quote here that schools and colleges truly can be guiding lighthouses and safe havens in a sea of uncertainty and that is relevant to children young people parents carers and staff absolutely okay then we're just looking at the last section here which is pointing us to kind of other resources and reading so if you're worried about a child there's lots of different services t