Wellbeing

Aspen Heights British School recognizes the importance of taking a whole school approach to wellbeing.

Aspen Heights has a number of progressive and ever-evolving supports in place to promote the positive mental health and socio-emotional wellbeing of our community. Wellbeing initiatives for students are embedded into our core curriculum through the provision of mindfulness activities in classrooms, as well as daily wellbeing and circle time sessions.

In addition to this, AHBS strives to establish early intervention, undertake wellbeing assessments and has a pastoral care team that is actively involved in ensuring our students and their families feel supported and heard. Aspen Heights also has a school counsellor on site to: provide individual and/or group counselling sessions in a confidential setting, run social emotional learning lessons across key year groups, send out weekly wellbeing and mental health resources to parents/families, organise and run family workshops, and make external referrals as and when needed.

We have two qualified Adult to Adolescent Mental Health first aiders in our pastoral team, available to support students during any form of mental health crisis.

At AHBS we recognise that children’s mental health is a crucial factor in their overall wellbeing and can affect their learning and achievement. In order to foster a nurturing and supportive school environment AHBS has put the following measures in place to support our students:

• A specialist identification and intervention program for SEND
• The provision of 1:1 confidential counselling onsite
• Group work sessions that focus on restorative practice, friendship groups and social skills
• Implementation of Social Emotional Learning Lessons for key year groups
• Positively themed weekly assemblies across the school
• UAE’s moral education program being embedded into curriculum
• A comprehensive transition programme for Year 6 students as they step into Secondary School

In addition, we also acknowledge the importance of staff and family wellbeing in relation to its impact on the school community, environment and the facilitation of engaging learning and our wellbeing provision extends to all staff members as well as parents/families. Supports in place as outlined in the AHBS Wellbeing policy include but are not limited to the following provisions:

• a social committee and Buddy Program for our staff
• an open door policy
• in house training on children’s mental health
• access to our school counsellor for tailored advice and support
• family workshops on parenting and children’s mental health
• Yoga with Mrs Shanahan for our families

This year Aspen Heights British School has also successfully provided internal training to all staff members on how to identify signs of mental health decline in students, as well as tips on how to support their own mental health. We have also had a number of guest speakers speak to staff members about the importance of putting wellbeing at the centre of all that we do. Guest speakers have included – Matthew Savage, educational consultant and creator of ‘The Mona Lisa Effect’, and Paul Dix, behaviour management instructor and author of When the Adults Change