Cornwall Schools’ Wellbeing Hub Newsletter 28th February 2025
Friday 28th February 2025
Welcome to the Wellbeing Newsletter
Part 1 - Training & Events
Welcome to the Wellbeing Newsletter
It says something when the most exciting part of my week is finally saying goodbye to our Moodle (grrr!) platform as we move the Cornwall Wellbeing Hub content to our website… You can find interactive online training on resilience; Protective Behaviours and the brilliant Digital Resilience training / tools.
This week the TES reported the findings of the Parentkind National Parent Survey 2024. The headlines focused on the nearly 1 in 3 children who refused to go to school over the last year with top reasons cited as mental health, not enjoying / not feeling safe* at school, having a special educational need or being bullied.
Behind the headlines the findings around parental mental health and the impacts of the cost-of-living crisis also make for worrying reading due the number of ways this impacts on children’s education and experience of school.
This underlines the timeliness and importance of the excellent Parent Engagement Framework. The framework offers a superb opportunity to work in partnership to help parents feel safe and supported and more empowered to support their children. We also have a section for parents on the website including advice and information about getting help / support for their mental health.
*An understanding of feeling safe (and feeling vs being safe) is the essence of the Protective Behaviours training. We explore feeling safe as a precursor to belonging / inclusion and as a part of a whole school relational approach… (next 2 day training 7th / 14th March)
About Anxiety
Coming Soon as part of the Brilliant ME! resource
Request a preview / provide feedback
Don’t forget you can now access this and previous newsletters on the website
Wellbeing Training with Headstart Kernow
Find details of all our training including on-demand interactive modules
Current:
- SPACE Combined (Parent & Carers and Children & Young People) 3-day Facilitator Training 3-day (all day) online training | Monday 12th, Tuesday 13th & Wednesday 14th May 2025
- A range of Karen Treisman Webinars - On-demand access Limited number of licences.
- FREE wellbeing content for all staff /governors / parents with Pooky Knightsmith’s Creative Education Platform (see below)
- Protective Behaviours 2 Day Foundation Course – March 7th / 14th 2025 (Carn Brea Leisure Centre, Pool)
- NEW for 2025 – Workforce Development Opportunities: (download PDF)
Have you joined the Headstart Kernow Creative Education membership yet?
Offering full and free access to a huge range of online, on-demand content for all school staff, governors and a dedicated membership for parents and carers.
Plus access to Live Networks for safeguarding and MH and wellbeing (with more to come)
Download our updated information fliers for:
Featured content from Creative Education
All you did was ask them to take their blazer off and WHAM - 15 continual minutes of aggression - leading to detentions, meetings and paperwork - this course helps you to understand the teenage brain, why they can often respond so *seemingly* negatively, and how we can empower teens to make the most of their education - with the unique developmental stage they are in…
Help Teenagers feel Belonging (so they can get on with your lesson)
This invites you to understand how the world might see you – if you were a teenager. It explores the stereotyping, discrimination and negativity that teens face – and how you can be a part of building a positive context for our young people, so that they can thrive with their education and within society.
NEW How to Have Difficult Conversations
This course enables you to develop skills for approaching conversations with empathy and assertiveness. It covers active listening, responding compassionately, and recognising one’s own emotional limits or “window of tolerance.” The focus is on creating meaningful, supportive interactions in challenging situations
- Staff Wellbeing Network – March 10, 2025 4:00 pm (45 mins)
- MH Lead Network – March 6, 2025 4:00 pm (45 mins)
Downloads from Creative Ed
- NEW Raising Staff Morale: A Practical Guide for Schools (download PDF)
- 8 Ideas to Enable Staff to Flourish at Work
- Creating a Neurodiversity Charter Resource
External Training
Empathy Lab
'Boys, books and reading for empathy’ (cost involved)
11th March 4.00 – 5.30pm
As our boys grow up, there are concerning trends which we believe educating for empathy has the potential to combat. This training helps you choose and use empathy-rich books which increase reading for pleasure, exploring what it is like to be a boy or young man in 2025, challenge pressures to conform to gender stereotypes, raise aspiration and support wellbeing.
Look out for the 2025 Reading for Empathy Collection just launched (more below)
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Part 2 - News / Resources / Updates
Eating Disorders Awareness Week 24th February – 2nd March
This year the BEAT eating disorders charity are focusing on raising awareness about how eating disorders can affect anyone.
BEAT have a school professionals online training (SPOT) e learning platform which is funded for primary / secondary schools and FE colleges.
SPOT aims to increase understanding of eating disorders, including how to spot the early signs in children of school age.
Research has shown that the earliest opportunity to prevent eating disorders is during primary school, with children showing concerns about physical appearance at an increasingly young age.
By accessing SPOT, you will be taught how to spot the early signs of an eating disorder, talk to a pupil exhibiting them, engage their families, and support them to seek medical assessment.
Cornwall's Healthy Schools Toolkit
The Healthy Schools Toolkit is the result of a strong collaboration between many partners, all dedicated to supporting schools across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly in creating environments that promote the health and wellbeing of children and young people.
This Healthy Schools Toolkit helps schools that want to improve the health and wellbeing of their whole school community. It can be used as a general school improvement tool to enable the whole school workforce to be creative in their approach to improving health and wellbeing.
Following the Healthy Schools Toolkit helps schools to meet recommendations in all 6 core health themes:
- Food, nutrition & dental health
- Physical activity
- Emotional health & wellbeing
- Health protection
- Environment, community & reasonability
- Workforce wellbeing
Within each Core Theme you’ll find recommendations on a variety of topics within that theme. Each recommendation is supported by top tips and useful links to ideas, activities, tools, lesson plans and more to assist you in the implementation of the recommendation.
Read the latest Healthy Schools update
Empathy Lab – Reading for Empathy Collection 2025 – Just released
The latest #ReadforEmpathy collection is here.
Jump into someone else's story with a diverse collection of empathy-rich texts, from picture books to non-fiction to graphic novels, written and illustrated by leading authors and illustrators. The 2025 collection is a fantastic resource to help grow an empathy-educated generation…
Primary Collection (pdf)
Secondary Collection (pdf)
We’ve come across some of these books already and they are superb. For example, the lovely “The Grand Hotel of Feelings”; The powerful and moving “The Wrong Shoes” and “Bird Boy”; The laugh out loud and hopeful “Keedie”.
Check out www.empathylab.uk for details of training and events coming up in 2025.
Register Now for the Empathy Day Festival 2nd – 12th June 2025
BBC wellbeing series for Children and Young People denied or restricted from accessing education (DARS)
Dars has produced a video helping children to deal with stress. It is aimed particularly at children and young people growing up in conflict zones. The video introduces what stress can feel like and provides some simple tools to help relaxation and stress reduction.
Watch the video: How to deal with stress
Explore the series: BBC Dars
VapeANON
VapeANON.com lets young people share information about shops selling vapes to children - and it’s entirely anonymous.
Created by Cornwall Council Trading Standards in response to concerns raised by young people at our Children’s Rights Annual Conversation, VapeANON enables young people to pass on information anonymously to Cornwall’s Trading Standards team about shops that are breaking the law by selling vapes to under 18s.
One of the young people who took part in the Annual Conversation said:
“Whilst working with other young people to create an action plan to address the issue of young people vaping at the Annual Conversation we all discovered that most of us knew at least one person who had bought a vape illegally. We all felt like something had to be done to prevent more young people accessing vapes so I’m very proud that Trading Standards listened to the concerns of the young people and are working to combat this issue."
We're calling on young people across the UK to get drawing and take part in M&S x YoungMinds Young Designer Competition – to design a new hoodie or sweatshirt – for the chance to have their design sold in M&S stores and online across the UK to support YoungMinds’ work.
The new hoodie and sweater will go on sale to celebrate this year’s Hello Yellow. When schools and communities come together on World Mental Health Day to show young people they’re not alone with their mental health.
Have you visited our new www.headstartkernow.org.uk website yet?
We are delighted to let you know that our refreshed and redesigned website went live recently. We made it simpler to find what you need as professionals supporting children and families need as well adding a new, more prominent area for parents and carers.