In 2019, Queen's Park Primary School was awarded Westminster Centre of Excellence for the work done towards training other schools in approaches to mental health and wellbeing. 

Following a successful application, Queen's Park continue to deliver bespoke training, mental health first aid, intervention support, recording impact of interventions and support with staff wellbeing. We continue to deliver support to others.

Our Philosophy

At Queen’s Park Primary our philosophy for learning is that it is fully inclusive and it is an ongoing process throughout an individual’s career. Essentially, we believe all our staff should have access to CPD which is designed to empower practitioners to be skilful, reflective, lifelong learners. To achieve this we build in elements of research and development through questioning, posing scenarios, observing quality practice in action in order to hone and develop their individual style and methodology.

To this end Queen’s Park Primary supports individuals in understanding the principles of not only teaching and learning but of mental health and wellbeing, an in depth understanding of the needs facing primary education; the conduit for which has been the development and implementation of a highly engaging and effective mental health and wellbeing provision. 

• Understanding of metacognition for staff and children
• Understanding of mental health and mental health first aid training
• Support on child bereavement
• Cognitive behaviour therapy approaches
• A three tiered approach for mental health and wellbeing and an understanding of outside agency referrals
• A platform to record interactions with individuals and refer to other tier of support

Our focus on supporting children and developing the whole child has been encouraged through:

• Resilience and resourcefulness in learning, where all children are confident to make mistakes and try new approaches.
• An active contribution in lessons, by posing questions, evaluating their findings and sharing resources, ideas and thoughts.
• Respect and consideration towards others and the learning environment.
• Working happily and productively on their own or with wider group of pupils.
• An understanding of metacognition
• Acknowledgement that other children react and respond in different ways

The impact of sharing our best practice will nurture a generation of practitioners who can demonstrate an understanding of mental health and wellbeing which will support not only the needs of their pupils but their parents, staff and local community

We will do this:

• To instil an understanding of how the brain works and how this can affect our mental health
• To create a suite of interventions which support mental health and wellbeing
• To reduce the stigma of mental health
• To engage outside agencies to support parental and community wellbeing
• To embed whole school approaches to mental health and wellbeing

The principles

• Context related
• Highly practical
• Backed up with theory from current thinking and relevant theorists from the past.
• Set within a context for expectations, accountability and evaluation.
• Relates directly to practice

Workforce

We are able to draw across a whole school who display different competencies and local providers of mental health based support.  Serving diverse communities with different socio economic indicators, means that practitioners delivering the training will have empathy with the very different settings schools may be experiencing.

All practitioners delivering the training sessions are experienced and highly successful teachers and support staff. Relevant training is accessed by staff to ensure that their skills and knowledge are up-to-date. They have undertaken research and development projects alongside University College London and Mental Health First Aid UK which ensures that practitioners are reflective and continuously improving their own skills.