Why Dickens Heath Community Primary School is a Nurturing School  

We are a community school in name and nature.  We want all members of our school community to feel safe, happy, respected and equal.  This is reflected in our 5 school values of:

RESPECT              TRUST                  HONESTY           

CO-OPERATION                POSITIVITY

For our children, we aim to provide a vibrant, ambitious, fully inclusive school that nurtures and develops children along an educational journey to become ’life ready’.  By providing an environment that is happy, safe and positive alongside a carefully considered personal development programme throughout school we aim to nurture confidence, motivation, independence and personal success for all pupils: enabling every person to be the best version of themselves. 

We aim to provide an educational offer and experience that:

Teaches responsibility and resilience 
Nurtures emotional intelligence 
Encourages ambition and achievement 
Promotes creativity and a love of knowledge 
Celebrates hard work and kindness 

We recognise that by prioritising the personal development of the whole child through a whole culture, curriculum and approach centred around 6 guiding Nurture principles our children will flourish, thrive and achieve both personally and academically.  

The Nurture principles

The National Nurturing Schools Programme helps schools to develop and embed a nurturing culture, enhancing teaching and learning, and promoting better outcomes for the whole school community. It focuses on pupils’ social and emotional needs and development alongside their academic learning and can improve attendance and behaviour. 

Social and emotional development is how children develop understanding of who they are, their feelings and how to interact with others. It includes learning how to form and sustain positive relationships, how to manage and express emotions and how to explore and engage with the environment.

Positive social and emotional development is crucial as it influences self-confidence, empathy, the ability to develop meaningful and lasting friendships and relationships and the sense of importance and value to others. Children’s social and emotional development also influences all other areas of development.

We became a part of a pilot group of schools in Solihull working in partnership with Nurture UK to embed the principles of Nurture and be recognised as a National Nurture school.   Nurture UK is dedicated to improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people and removing barriers to learning by promoting Nurture in education.

The Nurture Principles are the core principles that individuals base their practice on and are key to any Nurturing school. These basic principles are underpinned by the essential components of trust and relationships.

At Dickens Heath we have adapted the six principles of Nurture as follows:

If you are interested in finding out more about Nurture, please visit www.nurtureuk.org

Assessing social and emotional needs

• We want every child to have all the right conditions to thrive.  We want to ensure that every child gets the support they need to engage fully with their education whilst at Dickens Heath.
• Boxall assessments will be used to inform our pastoral support for children.  They allow support staff to understand and work more effectively with children in a way that’s sensitive to the needs of the child being assessed.
• The Boxall Profile is an assessment of a child’s social and emotional aptitudes. It was developed through many years of research by Educational Psychologist, Marjorie Boxall and has been used widely in schools and for research for over 20 years.
• Boxall Profile generate unique lesson plans tailored to each child’s specific SEMH needs and will effectively tackle individual challenges as well as evidence levels of needs across groups.
• Although the Boxall Profile is a useful tool for identifying strengths and areas for development, the views of parents/carers, teaching staff and, most importantly, the children themselves are also taken into consideration both within classrooms and when accessing support such as Nurture Group.
• Boxall assessments are completed every six months to monitor and track development and progress towards personal goals.

Targeted Nurture support

• Communities benefit from having a school that wants to be at the heart of the community and demonstrates its essential role in children and young people’s lives.  As a result of knowing our children well and building positive relationships with our families, we aim to develop our children socially, emotionally and to support positive mental health and wellbeing.
• We offer support to our pupils at a whole class universal level; in targeted groups as well as on a 1:1 basis with regards to social and emotional development
• Staff aim to model positive relationships; develop language and communication skills; provide a safe environment to focus on social, emotional development based on individual pupil needs and remove barriers to learning.
• We have a variety of options within our nurture groups both at play-times, lunch-times, within the classroom and beyond.   

What difference do Nurture Groups make for our children?

• they increase confidence and self-esteem
• children believe in themselves as learners
• they improve language, literacy and maths skills
• they allow children to have and make better friendships
• they enjoy school
• they can concentrate better
• they are able to solve problems
• they often return to their classes without needing extra help

Examples of our universal pastoral support as part of our Nurture approach are outlined below:

Our whole school SMILE approach

Our SMILE ethos and approach focuses on the wellness of the individual. This is an integral part of what we pride ourselves on at Dickens Heath as we consider the whole person and endeavour to make a commitment to one’s whole self and the contributions that they make as an employee. SMILE is closely linked to the NHS five ways to wellbeing:

NHS five ways to wellbeing: SMILE:

• Connect – Socialise
• Be active - Move
• Take notice, be mindful - Interest
• Keep learning - Learn
• Give to others - Engage

The aim of the approach is to empower the school community to become architects of their own health and wellbeing: physically, mentally and emotionally.  It informs our whole educational offer from the way we greet the children in the morning, to timetable of our school day, our curriculum design, our approaches to teaching and learning and our wider curriculum offer.

Playground Pals

Children in Year 6 have embarked on a development programme called ‘Peer Listener’ to equip them with the essential skills to:

• Encourage new friendships
• Give children the opportunity to play a variety of games
• Be there to give children support in solving minor conflict
• Be a friend to all
• To role model positive play
• Support children should they feel lonely

Playground Pals are available daily to support children across school.

Forest School

• Forest Schools are multi-sensory and can help improve concentration and the motivation to learn. Forest school can help children with learning disabilities or additional needs to gain more independence, reduce anxiety, build resilience and improve their communication skills.
• Forest school can promote the development of self-awareness by providing opportunities for children to challenge themselves and take risks. This may be physical activities such as tree climbing that support awareness of physical self or reflective activities that encourage children to analyse their successes and failures.
• The outdoor environment encourages skills such as problem solving and negotiating risk which are important for child development. Whilst these opportunities for children to access the natural environment are diminishing, children are spending less time outside due to concerns over safety, traffic, crime and parental worries.

Be Confident

This is a 6 week programme called ‘Be Confident’ from Engage Solihull that aims to:

• To provide a range of tools to support confidence
• To understand what confidence is
• To understand the value of self-talk
• To understand what appearance ideals are
• To understand the impact of body language
• To gain an understanding of the 5 ways to wellbeing

The intended outcomes of the programme are to:

• Enable participants to recognise when they feel confident or not.
• Increase the positive self-talking of young people
• Enable young people to understand the impact of appearance ideals
• Enable young people to understand the impact of body language
• Enable young people to understand the impact of the five ways to wellbeing

Examples of our more targeted support are outlined below:

Lego Therapy

• Maths and Science skills fosters spatial reasoning and awareness of portions and patterns. The basic Lego bricks also teach fractions and division without children realizing it. Physics and engineering skills are also silently being developed, thinking in three dimensions, balance and weight use support for these structures.
• The most obvious physical benefit of building with Lego is the development of fine motor skills, which require small muscle movements as a child manipulates, he/she develops co-ordination in fingers and hands. The ability to follow instructions is a key benefit of Lego building with step-by step instructions to complete the task.
• Thinking and using problem solving skills are key to building with Lego. Sometimes using the trial-and-error method, other benefits of planning and organising thoughts as well as bring an idea to life.
• Creativity is, perhaps the most obvious of the benefits of learning with Lego. Building with blocks fosters a child’s creativity. Free, open ended play encourages children to think outside the box and dream up endless possibilities.

Talk Therapy

Talking therapy can help with a wide range of mental, emotional, and behavioural issues. It can also help communication, manage difficult daily experiences, and improve overall mental wellbeing.

Family Support and Early Help

Early Help supports families at the earliest point when they first have challenges, stopping problems from escalating. Parents are encouraged to build on their capacity and resources and are empowered to deal with the challenges they face.

SOLAR

Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust, Barnardo’s and Autism West Midlands work together to provide emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children and young people in Solihull. They provide multi disciplinary assessment and treatment of children and young people with mental health or severe emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Key staff involved in our Nurture approach and pastoral offer:

Mrs Nicholls – Headteacher

Mrs Donaghy – Deputy Head: Nurture and Personal Development Lead

Mrs Sutton – Deputy Head: Curriculum and Assessment and Behaviour Lead

Mrs Miller – Deputy Head: Inclusion and Early Years Lead

Miss Hull – Child and Family Liaison Team Leader with responsibility for safeguarding

Mrs Carabine – SENDCo

Mrs Wild, Wellbeing and Family liaison co-ordinator

Ms Coombes, Wellbeing and Nurture Support