Health and Wellbeing

A recent focus for the Health and Wellbeing team has been the development of Drawing and Talking.

Drawing and Talking is a person-centred therapy focusing on prevention, early intervention and recovery. Drawing and Talking technique is a safe and easy to learn short term, time-limited therapy to be used with anyone (age 5+) who has suffered trauma or has underlying emotional difficulties. It supports those who are not realising their full potential either academically, professionally or socially. The purpose of the method is to draw with a person who with whom they feel comfortable at the same time each week. The trusted person will learn to ask a number of non-intrusive questions about the drawing, and over time a symbolic resolution is found to old conflicts and trauma is healed.

A great overview of how we support Mental Health and Wellbeing can be found here:

https://sites.google.com/sl.glow.scot/sasb-health-wellbeing/home

Some of the other activity that the Health and Wellbeing team have recently lead is detailed below:

Children's Mental Week

All departments were involved in delivering Subject based mental health lessons to our S1 classes and the feedback from the pupils were very positive. This awareness week encouraged conversations, improved knowledge and understanding of how to grow together as a school and community.

Anxiety workshops

These workshops were delivered in December by Mrs McQueen and Mrs McPolin to a group of pupils who were referred from guidance. The group engaged in conversations about what Anxiety is and how to manage it with coping strategies. This led to a 6 week block being delivered from Miss Clark and Miss Rodgers to a group of 10 pupils who are on the waiting list for other interventions such as counselling or LIAM. These workshops are an early intervention strategy put in place to help pupils now, with the hope to improve their mental health and reduce waiting lists.

The bloom trained staff are equipped with all the resources and support to deliver this. There are free courses available to become a bloom trainer which will help the school with tackling these mental health issues.

Anti-bullying week

Led by Miss Rodgers and supported by a working group. This week had all S1 pupils attend a workshop on selected periods with a variety of activities to bring about awareness of how to treat and respect each other.

National Girls day

On that day the PE department facilitied all the S3 and S2 Girls to join in with a fitness class delivered by a SuperAthlete from Crossfit East Kilbride. Ali Crawford gave an inspirational speech about self-esteem and confidence and shared some stories of her own struggles growing up being different because of her love for sports and exercise.