Supporting Children’s Mental Health and Well-being
At Rocklands, children’s mental health and emotional well-being are at the heart of everything we do. We know that good mental health is the foundation for learning, relationships, resilience, and a happy, fulfilled life—and that children thrive when they feel safe, understood, and supported. Our approach is holistic, nurturing, inclusive, and trauma-informed, carefully tailored to meet the individual needs of our pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs. Every day, we work to create an environment where every child belongs, learns and grows.
Understanding Behaviour and Building Relationships
We believe that all behaviour is communication. By taking time to understand each child’s needs, experiences, and emotions, we can support them effectively. Strong, trusting relationships are at the heart of our practice, helping children feel safe, valued, and ready to learn.
Our Approach
We support the whole child—their emotional, sensory, social and communication needs. We create predictable routines, calm spaces and visual supports that help children feel secure. All staff are trained in emotional regulation, communication-friendly practice, and SEN-specific mental health strategies.
We follow a graduated approach, with universal support for all children, additional support where needed, and specialist pathways when appropriate.
For our pupils, good mental health includes:
- Feeling safe and confident in their environment
- Being able to express emotions in a way that works for them
- Having access to sensory regulation and calming strategies
- Building positive relationships with adults and peers
- Experiencing success and joy throughout their school day
We recognise the impact of anxiety, changes to routine, communication differences and sensory processing on our pupils’ emotional wellbeing—and we plan proactively to support them.
Tools that Support Emotional Regulation
To help pupils understand and manage their emotions, we use a range of structured approaches, including:
- Zones of Regulation/Mood Bears – teaching children to recognise their feelings and use strategies to help them regulate.
- Nurture – ensuring children experience safety, belonging, and predictable routines through teaching sessions and interventions.
- ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistants) – delivering targeted support to help pupils explore emotions, friendships, and self-esteem.
- Mental Health Week
- Quality of Life – Wider Curriculum offer, Enrichment
- Communication
- Understanding Behaviour – PROACT-SCIPr-UK®
- Relationships – at the core of everything we do
- Anti-bullying programme, PHSE and RSE curriculum
- Preparing for Adulthood curriculum: Junior Duke
- Parental workshops and drop-in sessions
Identifying and Responding to Needs
We use a range of assessment tools to build a clear picture of each child’s emotional wellbeing and to ensure the support we offer is meaningful, personalised, and effective.
The Boxall Profile helps us identify social, emotional and behavioural needs so we can plan targeted interventions and track progress over time. Following this assessment, children may be placed in Nurture Groups or receive ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) sessions, depending on their individual needs. These interventions run in blocks and are reviewed at the end of each cycle to assess impact and inform next steps.
We also use Quality of Life Measures, captured through our bespoke frameworks on Tapestry, to understand how pupils experience school life—focusing not only on academic progress but also on happiness, comfort, engagement, life skills and independence. Our Junior Duke programme further supports this by promoting resilience, confidence and personal development.
Together, these assessments allow us to monitor each child’s wellbeing over time and ensure our support remains responsive, purposeful, and child centred.
Specialist Input and Multi-Agency Support
Our Mental Health and Wellbeing offer is strengthened by collaboration with external specialists:
- South Staffordshire Mental Health Team – Katie Newton
- CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services)
- Educational Psychologists
- Therapeutic and behaviour specialists
- Mental Health Referral
- Referral to agencies – e.g. EP, LD Team, Early Help CYP ASD
Our Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Team
Our SEL Team works across the school to:
- support children with emotional needs,
- guide staff with strategies,
- deliver wellbeing interventions, and
- promote a positive mental health culture.
Mood Bears play a key role in strengthening emotional literacy, improving self‑regulation and supporting positive mental health across the school. More
than lovable characters, the bears act as consistent, whole‑school tools for nurturing emotionally safe learning environments.
In our Pre‑formal and some Semi‑formal pathways, Mood Bears are used as a highly accessible, visual and tactile resource to help pupils recognise, label and communicate their feelings. Staff model emotional language through the bears, supporting pupils to express themselves in ways that feel safe and appropriate, while gently developing regulation strategies that match their stage of learning and development. Our Sessions are supported by South
Staffordshire Mental Health Support Team
There are 8 Mood Bears, each representing a different emotion:
- Happy Bear – Joy and positivity
- Sad Bear – Feeling down or upset
- Angry Bear – Frustration and anger
- Calm Bear – Peace and relaxation
- Love Bear – Caring and kindness
- Hope Bear – Optimism and looking forward
- Anxious Bear – Worry and nervousness
- Silly Bear – Fun and playfulness.
This approach helps children recognise emotions, express themselves safely, and develop coping strategies in a positive, interactive way.
At Rocklands, we use the Zones of Regulation as a whole‑school framework to help pupils understand their emotions and develop lifelong self‑regulation skills. The approach provides a clear, shared language for talking about feelings, making it highly accessible for our pupils across all pathways. Through visual supports, structured lessons and consistent modelling from adults, children learn to recognise their emotional state, understand what might be influencing it, and use practical strategies to help themselves feel calm, focused and ready to learn.
Through whole-school and targeted approaches, we create an environment where every child can Belong, Believe and Become.